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The boy had learned much of odd-sounding names and strange 

sea terms. 



HE ISLAND OF 
APPLEDORE 


BY 


ADAIR ALDON p. . 

«C^woU_, 7YU+?j o 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 

By W. B. KING ✓ 


fork 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1917 

All riehts reserved 

Ccivi £ 


COPYBIGHT, 1917 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


/ 


Set up and electrotyped. Published, September, 1917. 



' c 

J « « 


< 1 


OCT -4 1917 ’ 


©CI.A47646 6 





FOREWORD 


Any one who knows the coast of New Eng- 
land will know also the Island of Appledore 
and just where it lies. Such a person can tell 
you that it is not exactly the place described in 
this book, that it is small and bare and rocky 
with no woods, no meadows, no church, or 
mill, or mill-creek road. Perhaps all that the 
story tells of it that is true is that there the 
rocks give forth their strange deep song, “the 
calling of Appledore,” as warning of a storm, 
that there the poppies bloom as nowhere else 
in the world, that there the surf comes rolling 
v in, day in and day out, the whole year through, 
and that there one’s memory turns back with 
longing, no matter how many years of absence 
have gone by. 

There, also, you can sit for hours to watch 
the huge, green breakers come foaming and 
tumbling in endless procession up the stony 
beach; you can watch the nimble sandpipers 
and the tireless, wheeling gulls; and if you 


F o re wo r d 


choose you can spin for yourself just such a 
story as this one of Billy Wentworth and Cap- 
tain Saulsby and Sally Shute, a tale of mys- 
teries and perils and midnight adventures on 
the shores of Appledore. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I Peering Eyes 

PAGE 

I 

II 

The Mill-Creek Road .... 

. 20 

III 

The Cruise of the Josephine 

• 39 

IV 

Captain Saulsby’s Watch 

62 

V 

The War Game 

• 75 

VI 

The Ebbing of the Tide .... 

. 90 

VII 

Mist and Moonlight 

. 105 

VIII 

The Stranger at the Mill . 

. 122 

IX 

The Calling of the Island . 

. 136 

X 

Three Quarters of a Year . 

• 154 

XI 

The Watchfires of Appledore . 

. 170 

XII 

The Last Voyage of Johann Happs 

• 191 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


The boy had learned much of odd-sounding names 

and strange sea terms Frontispiece 

PAGE 

“Why,” gasped Billy, “it must have been the Fly- 
ing Dutchman * 68 

Johann shook his head in mute anguish . . . .132 

“Would you believe it, there were two boys that put 

to sea right in the face of it?” 202 



THE ISLAND OF 
APPLEDORE 


CHAPTER I 

PEERING EYES 

Two big willow-trees guarded the entrance 
to Captain S'aulsby’s place, willow-trees with 
such huge, rough trunks and such thick, 
gnarled branches that they might almost have 
been oaks. For fifty years they had bent and 
rocked before the furious winter storms, had 
bowed their heads to the showers of salt spray 
and had trembled under the shock of the thun- 
dering surf that often broke on the rocks be- 
low them. They had seen tempests and 
wrecks and thrilling rescues upon that stretch 
of sea across which they had looked so long, 
they had battled with winds that had been too 
much for more than one of the ships flying 
for shelter to the harbour of Appledore. It 
was no wonder that they showed the stress of 
time. 


2 The Island of Appledore 

Billy Wentworth stood hesitating at the gap 
in the wall, looked up at the swaying, pale- 
green branches above him and down at the 
green and white surf rolling in on the shore 
below, sniffed at the keen salt breeze and tried 
to tell himself that he did not like it. He 
was so thoroughly angry and discontented that 
he could see nothing pleasant in the sunny 
stretch of open water, the glitter of the tossing 
whitecaps and the line of breaking waves 
about the lighthouse a mile away. 

“To spend the summer on a little two-by- 
four island with an old-maid aunt,” was his 
bitter reflection, “to have nothing on earth to 
do and no one to do it with — it’s just too hard. 
I won’t stand it long.” 

He stumped the toes of his boots in the dust 
of the narrow path with as much obstinate 
sulkiness as though he were six years old in- 
stead of sixteen. Perhaps it made him even 
more angry than he was before, to discover 
that, in spite of what he had been thinking, 
he had stood staring for some minutes at the 
big, curling waves as they rolled in, receded, 
and came foaming up among the rocks again. 
Indeed he had been watching with such fas- 
cination that he could scarcely tear his eyes 


The Island of Appledore 3 

away. He had seen the Atlantic Ocean for 
the first time in his life only a few hours ago, 
and he was still trying, with some success, to 
convince himself that he did not like it and 
never would. 

He strolled aimlessly along the path which 
he had been told led to “Cap’n Saulsby’s little 
house down on the point.” There was a 
vague desire in his mind to look upon a live 
sea-captain since he had never seen one be- 
fore. The feeling was not strong, only just 
enough to bring him along the shore road 
and through the willow-guarded gateway. 
He had no thought, as he walked slowly be- 
tween the two big trees, that they marked the 
door to a new phase in his life, that they were 
fo prove the entrance to adventures and perils 
of an unknown kind. He merely trudged 
along, frowning at the sun that shone too 
brightly on the dazzling blue water and at 
the wind that blew too sharply in his face. 

Somebody was walking up the path before 
him; so he slackened his pace a little, having 
no wish to overtake him. As far as he could 
judge it was a boy of about twenty-one or so, 
very fair-haired, with broad shoulders and 
well-shaped hands hanging from sleeves a 


4 


The Island of Appledore 

trifle too short. He carried a bag of tools and 
was whistling gaily some intricate tune of 
trills and runs as he walked along. As he 
turned to look out to sea, Billy saw that he 
had a pleasant face, cheerful, intelligent and 
rather sensitive. He stood for a minute, 
though without seeing Billy, then walked on 
again, swinging his bag and piping his music 
in the very best of spirits. 

A bobolink was swinging on the branch of a 
bush that leaned over the wall. The gay 
black-and-white fellow was a new bird to 
Billy, so he stopped to look at it more closely. 
Certainly it was the bird that caught his at- 
tention not the unaccountable rustle that he 
heard immediately after, for that sound he 
might never have noticed save for the strange 
thing that followed. 

For the rustle was repeated; then a hand 
rose over the wall, slipped across one of the 
big lichen-covered rocks and rapped upon it 
sharply with something metallic. The boy 
ahead of him stopped dead, hesitated a sec- 
ond, then turned slowly toward the sound. 
Billy could see now that there was a man 
there behind the wall, crouching among the 
bushes, some one rather small, narrow-shoul- 


The Island of Appledore 5 

dered and with stiff black hair. He seemed 
to be peering intently at the boy on the path 
but did not move or speak. The boy, also, 
said nothing but presently went upon his way 
again, swinging his bag and once more trying 
to whistle. But such a trembling, broken tune 
as came forth in place of the former cheerful 
music! The lad looked back once, but was 
gazing so eagerly at the wall that he did not 
notice Billy at all. He showed a face turned 
suddenly gray-white with terror, drawn, hag- 
gard and anxious. It was plainly visible that 
his knees shook under him as he tried to stride 
onward at his former gait, and that it was 
because of the trembling of his hands that 
his bag of tools dropped twice upon the 
grass. 

What could have been in that man’s face 
that had alarmed him so? The boy looked 
like a vigorous, spirited sort of person, Billy 
thought, one that it might be nice to know and 
be friends with, not a coward. The mild in- 
terest that had brought him through the gate 
now gave place to extreme curiosity as he 
hurried up the path. 

Around the curve of a low knoll Captain 
Saulsby’s house came into view. It was an 


6 The Island of Appledore 

oddly-shaped little dwelling, so surrounded 
with trees and bushes that there was not much 
to be seen of it except bits here and there: a 
peering chimney, patches of red-stained roof, 
a portion of gray wall and the front door 
painted a bright, cheerful blue. Sloping 
away to the rocky point lay Captain Saulsby’s 
garden, with its rows of vegetables and shrubs 
and flowers. Captain Saulsby himself was 
sitting in an armchair on the wide, stone door- 
step, but alas he did not look in the least as 
Billy had expected. 

He had pictured old sailors as being white- 
haired, but sturdy and upright, dressed in blue 
clothes and moving with a rolling walk or 
sitting to stare out to sea through a brass tele- 
scope. Captain Saulsby’s hair was not ex- 
actly white, it was indeed no particular color 
on earth; he wore shabby overalls a world too 
big even for his vast figure and he had carpet 
slippers instead of picturesque sea-boots. Yet 
the flavour of the sea somehow clung to him 
after all, brought out, perhaps, by the texture 
of his face which was red and weather-beaten 
with the skin wrinkled and thickened to the 
consistency of alligator leather, and by his 
huge rough hands that resembled nothing so 


The Island of Appledore 7 

much as the gnarled and stunted willow-trees 
at his gate. 

Instead of grasping a telescope, he was hold- 
ing a bright blue sock which he was mending 
as deftly as though well used to the task. The 
darning needle seemed lost between his big 
fingers, but it went in and out with great speed, 
pushed by a sailor’s palm instead of a thimble. 
That, Billy thought disappointedly, was the 
only really nautical thing about him. 

“Good afternoon, Johann Happs,” the cap- 
tain called cheerily as the first of his visitors 
came near. Then peering over his spectacles 
at Billy, he added, “Who is that behind you?” 

The boy whom he called Johann wheeled 
suddenly and turned upon Billy a look that he 
could never forget. Terror, desperation and 
defiance all were written on his unhappy face 
and in his startled eyes. When he saw, how- 
ever, that it was not the black-haired man who 
had peered over the wall, but only a boy from 
the summer colony at the hotel, his evident 
bewilderment and relief might have been al- 
most ridiculous had they not been pathetic. 
He laughed shakily and turned to the captain. 

“I do not know who it is,” he said, “Perhaps 
someone to buy strawberries.” 


8 The Island of Appledore 

“You’re Miss Mattie Pearson’s nephew, 
now I’ll be bound,” remarked the old man, 
surveying Billy carefully from head to foot as 
he came closer. “She told me all about you, 
where you had meant to go this summer and 
how you came here instead and maybe weren’t 
going to like us here on Appledore Island. 
Johann, look at that frown on his face; I 
don’t think he has sized us up very fair so 
far, do you? Well, he’ll learn, he’ll learn!” 

Billy frowned more deeply than ever, partly 
because he had no taste for being made sport 
of by a stranger and partly because the mem- 
ory of his recent disappointments came back 
to him with a fresh pang. His plan for this 
summer had been to camp out in the Rockies, 
to climb mountains, to ride horseback, fish in 
the roaring, ice-cold little trout streams and 
to shoot grouse when the season came around. 
His father and mother had promised him just 
such a program; they were all three to carry 
it out together, being the three most congenial 
camping comrades that ever lived. How- 
ever, sudden developments of business, due to 
the war in Europe and the necessity of turning 
in other directions for trade, had called his 
father to South America at just the season 


The Island of Appledore 9 

when Billy could not leave school to go also. 
It was during the Easter vacation that he had 
travelled from his school in the Middle West 
to New York, to see his father and mother off 
on their long voyage ; then he had gone back 
unwillingly to face continuous days of miss- 
ing them and of rebelling vainly against the 
destruction of his hopes for the summer. 

When Miss Mattie Pearson, his mother’s 
sister, had invited her reluctant nephew to 
stay at Appledore, she must have realized that 
the resources of the hotel and the little fish- 
ing village that the Island boasted, would 
scarcely be sufficient to satisfy him. She 
seemed to have been thinking of Captain 
Saulsby even when she wrote her first letter, 
for she had said, “I hope you will find one 
companion, at least, who will interest you.” 
She had a great affection for the queer, gruff, 
bent, old sailor, and must have felt that he 
and the boy were bound to become friends. 
And now Billy, standing before the captain 
himself, shifting uneasily from foot to foot 
and looking into those small, twinkling blue 
eyes, was beginning, much to his surprise, to 
feel the same thing. 

“There are some strawberries down yonder 


io The Island of Appledore 

in the best patch, that I have been saving for 
your Aunt,” the old man went on. “I’m glad 
you came along, for this isn’t one of my spry 
days and I couldn’t carry them up to the hotel 
myself. I have been expecting Jacky Shute 
to take them, but the young monkey hasn’t 
turned up. You didn’t see him, did you, 
Johann, as you came along?” 

“No,” replied Johann hastily, much too 
hastily, Billy thought, “I saw no one, not any- 
one at all.” 

Billy looked at him in amazement. He did 
not seem at all like the kind of person who 
could tell such a lie. Nor did he appear to 
enjoy telling it, for he stammered, turned red, 
picked up his bag of tools and set them down 
again. 

“I will go in and mend the clock now, if 
you don’t mind, Captain Saulsby,” he said, 
perhaps in the desire to escape further ques- 
tioning. 

“Go right in and do anything you like to 
it,” the old man returned, “and meanwhile 
this young fellow and I will go down and get 
the berries. Just reach me that basket of 
boxes, will you, and give me a hand up out 


II 


The Island of Appledore 

of this chair, and we’ll be off. The clock is 
ticking away as steadily as old Father Time 
himself, but I suppose you will find some tink- 
ering to do.” 

He took up the heavy wooden stick that 
leaned against his chair and that looked as 
rough and knobby and weather-worn as him- 
self. With Johann’s help he rose slowly from 
his seat, making Billy quite gasp at the full 
sight of how big he was. Yet he would have 
been much bigger could he have stood upright, 
for he was bent and twisted with rheumatism 
in every possible way; his shoulders bowed, 
his back crooked, his knees and elbows warped 
quite out of their natural shape. He wrin- 
kled his forehead under the stress of evident 
pain and breathed very hard as he stumped 
down the path, but for a few moments he said 
nothing. 

“Kind of catches me a little when I first 
get up,” he remarked cheerfully at last. 
“There have been three days of fog and that’s 
always bad for a man as full of rheumatics as 
I am. I hope you won’t mind very much 
gathering the berries yourself. I — I — ” his 
face twisted with real agony as he stumbled 


12 The Island of Appledore 

over a stone. “I find it takes me a pretty 
long time to stoop my old back over the rows 
and some folks would rather not wait.” 

“Indeed I don’t mind,” replied Billy with 
cordial agreement to the plan. He had no re- 
luctance in owning to himself that, however 
discontented he was with things in general, 
here was one person at least whom he was 
going to like. 

“Now,” said Captain Saulsby as they 
reached the strawberry patch at the foot of 
the garden, “eat as many as you can and fill 
the boxes as full as you can carry them away. 
That is what berries are made for, so go to 
it.” 

This invitation was no difficult one to ac- 
cept. The berries were big and ripe and 
sweet, and warm with the warmth of the pleas- 
ant June day. It was still and hot there in the 
sun, with no sound except the booming of the 
surf along the shore, and the shrill call of a 
katydid in the hedge at Billy’s elbow. 

The glittering sea stretched out on each side 
of them, for Captain Saulsby’s garden lay 
along the point that formed the northern- 
most end of Appledore Island. A coasting 
schooner, her decks piled high with new, yel- 


The Island of Appledore 13 

low lumber, came beating into the wind on 
one side of the rocky headland, finally dou- 
bled it and, spreading her sails wing-and-wing, 
went skimming away before the breeze. 
Billy, whose whole knowledge of boats in- 
cluded only canoes and square, splashing 
Mississippi River steamers, sat back on his 
heels watching, open-mouthed, as the grace- 
ful craft sped off as easily as a big bird. 

“Say, young fellow, your aunt will be wait- 
ing a long time for those berries,” was Captain 
Saulsby’s drawling reminder that brought 
him back to his senses. He blushed, recol- 
lected quickly that he was the boy who hated 
the Island of Appledore and everything be- 
longing to it, and fell to picking strawberries 
again with his back to the schooner. The lit- 
tle katydid began to sing again. 

“That’s a queer fellow, that Johann Happs,” 
the old sailor remarked reflectively as he sat 
watching Billy’s vigorous industry. “He is a 
German; at least his father was, although Jo- 
hann was born in this country and is as Amer- 
ican as any one of us. He is as honest and 
straightforward a boy as I have ever known 
and has been a friend of mine as long as I 
have lived here. But there is something 


14 The Island of Appledore 

wrong with him lately that he is keeping from 
me. I wish I could manage to guess what 
it is.” 

“Did you say he mends clocks for a living?” 
Billy asked. He decided that he would not 
betray Johann’s secret, little as he knew of it, 
and much as he desired to learn more. 

“No, clock-mending is his recreation, not 
his business. He is a mechanic, and a good 
faithful worker, but when he wants to be really 
happy he just gets hold of a bunch of old 
rusty wheels and weights, that hasn’t run for 
twenty years, and works at them by the hour. 
To see him tinkering would show you where 
his real genius is. He gave me a clock that 
belonged to his father, a queer old thing with 
gold roses on the face and with wooden wheels, 
but it runs like a millionaire’s watch. He 
comes around once in so often to see if it is 
doing its duty, and has six fits if it has lost a 
second in a couple of weeks. He’s a queer 
fellow.” 

“Then he isn’t a fisherman,” commented 
Billy. “I thought that every one who lived 
on the Island was that.” 

“Almost every one is, except that boy and 
me,” answered the Captain. “No, Johann 


The Island of Appledore 15 

isn’t a fisherman, but you never saw any one 
in your life who can sail a boat the way he 
can. That’s his little craft anchored off the 
point there; she’s the very apple of his eye. 
Just see how he keeps her; I do believe he 
would give her a new coat of paint every week 
if he could afford it. He’s surely proud of 
her! He was so happy with her a little while 
back that I can’t understand what has come 
over him now.” 

He sat staring at the little boat, until Billy 
finally had filled his boxes and had risen to his 
feet. 

“I have picked all these for Aunt Mattie,” 
he said, “and have eaten about twice as many 
besides. Now won’t you let me pick some for 
you?” 

“Why, that’s good of you,” returned the old 
man gratefully. “I won’t deny that it is 
easier work sitting here and watching you 
gather them than to try to get the pesky things 
myself. I don’t need any myself but I did 
want to send some to Mrs. Shute, over beyond 
the creek. They are just right for putting up 
now and will be almost too ripe in another 
day. That rascal Jacky should have taken 
them, but there’s no knowing where he is.” 


16 The Island of Appledore 

“I’ll pick them and take them to her, if you 
will tell me the way,” Billy assured him. 
“Don’t say no; I would really like to.” 

The boxes filled rapidly, to the accompani- 
ment of much earnest talk between Billy and 
his new friend. He learned how little to be 
relied upon was Jacky Shute, the Captain’s 
assistant gardener; what an unusual number 
of summer visitors on the Island there were, 
owing to the war in Europe and the impos- 
sibility of people’s going abroad; what a cold, 
windy spring it had been, very bad for vege- 
tables and for the poppies that were the pride 
of Appledore gardens but — 

“Great for sailing,” the old man concluded 
wistfully. 

When the berries were ready, the Captain 
came with Billy to the edge of the garden to 
show him the way. Beyond the point, on its 
western shore-line, was a stretch of curving 
beach, cut into a deep harbour by the mouth 
of a little stream. 

“You cross that meadow above the rocks,” 
the Captain directed, “and go straight on 
down to the creek. You will find a row of 
stepping stones that makes almost a bridge; 
the tide is nearly dead low so it will certainly 


The Island of Appledore 17 

be uncovered and you can cross without trou- 
ble. The stream is the mill creek, and that 
building you see on the other side, among the 
trees, is the old mill. You go up from the 
creek right past the mill door and follow the 
road that leads through the woods. The first 
lane that turns off from that will take you to 
the Shutes’, so you see you can’t miss the way. 
They have a nice girl, Sally Shute; I hope 
she’ll be at home for I know you’ll like her. 
She is worth twenty of Jacky, that worthless 
young brother of hers.” He turned back to 
the garden. “Well, good-bye; I know you 
won’t have any trouble getting there but don’t 
stay too long, the tide is pretty quick to cover 
the causeway over the creek and then you 
would have to walk five miles around by the 
highroad. I will see you when you come back 
and I surely am obliged to you.” 

Billy set off with his load of boxes under 
his arm, stepping carefully through the tall 
grass of the meadow where daisies nodded in 
white profusion and bayberries and brambles 
grew thickly along the stony edge of the field. 
He came presently in sight of the stream and 
the bridge-like stepping stones, finding them, 
as Captain Saulsby had said, just uncovered 


18 The Island of Appledore 

by the dropping tide. One huge rock jutted 
far out into the water at the edge of the little 
harbour, and here he found himself tempted 
to stop a minute, staring at the foaming green 
water, then to climb down from ledge to ledge 
and finally to seat himself just above where 
the surf was breaking. 

How cool and deep the tumbling waves 
were, how they came rolling solemnly in, and 
then seemed to hesitate for one short second 
before they broke and sent spattering showers 
up to his very feet. He must go on, of course ; 
it was really a shame to delay longer; he 
would just watch another breaker come in, 
and then another — and another, so that he 
might see again those shining rainbows that 
came and went in the sunlit spray. 

He heard something scurry and scuttle 
across the rock near by him and, as he looked 
over the edge, saw a slim, brown mink come 
out of a hole and stop to look up at him. It 
must have had a nest near by, for it was 
fierce in its anger at his intrusion and seemed 
quite unafraid. Its wicked little eyes fairly 
snapped with rage, and it made a queer hiss- 
ing sound as it tried, with tiny fury, to frighten 
him away. He laughed and turned to go, 


The Island of Appledore 19 

then started back suddenly as he spied a face 
peering out at him for a moment from behind 
the big, grey rock above him. It struck him, 
startled as he was, that the human face was 
something like the mink’s; the same narrow 
cruel jaw, the same retreating forehead, the 
little beady black eyes and stiff black hair. 
With a great effort, although his heart ham- 
mered at his ribs and his knees shook a little, 
if the truth must be told, he climbed up to the 
jutting rock and looked behind it. There was 
no one there. He drew a sigh of relief at 
the thought that he must have been mistaken, 
then checked it sharply when he saw a black 
shadow, thin, lithe and quickly-moving, slip 
across the surface of the rocks and vanish. 


CHAPTER II 


THE MILL-CREEK ROAD 

Billy’s passage over the causeway was a 
hasty and somewhat perilous one, for the rocks 
were overgrown with thick, brown seaweed 
and still wet from the falling tide. Consid- 
ering what a hurry he was in and how many 
times he looked back over his shoulder, it was 
quite remarkable that he made the crossing 
without mishap. He walked up a strip of 
sandy beach, climbed a steep bank and came 
into the cool, dark pine woods. The faint 
marks of an old road showed before him, cov- 
ered with a rusty-brown carpet of fallen nee- 
dles and leading past the big, grey empty mill 
of which the Captain had spoken. He fol- 
lowed along it, turned down the lane as di- 
rected and tramped some distance straight 
through the forest, the tall black trees tower- 
ing above him and the partridge berries, trail- 
ing ground pine and slender swinging Indian 
pines growing thick beneath his feet. 

20 


The Island of Appledore 21 

It was more than a mile, perhaps nearly 
two, that he covered before he observed a 
clearing ahead of him, and then came sud- 
denly to the edge of the woods and to the shore 
again. A very neat, brown cottage stood in 
the open space,, with a garden around it, a 
fence of white palings and a green gate at the 
end of the lane. Beyond the house he could 
see grey rocks, a little pier stretching out into 
the water, a fishing boat at anchor and, as a 
background to everything, the bright, sunlit 
sea. He opened the gate and came slowly 
through the garden. 

A little girl was stooping over one of the 
round flowerbeds, picking pansies into her 
white apron. She was a short and solid little 
person, with thick yellow braids, very round 
pink cheeks and, as she looked up at him, a 
most cordial welcoming smile. 

“I’m Sally Shute,” she announced somewhat 
abruptly and without a particle of shyness; 
then, as Billy hesitated, “I believe I would 
like to know who you are.” 

“I’m Billy Wentworth, and I brought these 
strawberries from Captain Saulsby,” the boy 
answered, a little abashed at this sudden 
plunge into the business of getting acquainted. 


22 The Island of Appledore 

“The Captain said he was sorry not to send 
them sooner.” 

He could not seem to think of anything else 
to say, that was of especial importance, so 
turned to go. 

“Wait,” Sally commanded, in the tone of 
one who is used to having her orders obeyed. 
“I must take the berries to my mother and 
have her empty them out, because Captain 
Saulsby will want his boxes back again. And 
I think,” — here she looked him over solemnly 
from head to foot — “I think that you look 
thirsty.” 

Billy grinned and admitted that there might 
be some reason for that appearance. 

Getting acquainted with Sally was as rapid 
a process as had been getting acquainted with 
Captain Saulsby. The tall glass of cold milk 
and the plate of fresh gingerbread certainly 
put an end to any formalities between them, 
and the expedition down to the hen-house to 
see the new brood of deliciously round, fat 
ducklings carried them far on the road toward 
friendship. Billy thought that the ducks 
looked rather like Sally herself, they were so 
small and fat and yellow and so very sure of 
themselves, but he did not summon courage 


The Island of Appledore 23 

to say so. Next, they went down to the pier 
to see, “the biggest big fish you ever saw, that 
my father brought in last night.” 

This, Billy felt, was more worth showing 
him than were mere ducklings, but he did not 
admit being impressed by the size of the fish, 
although in truth it was a monster, nearly as 
long as the dory that held it. He stood pass- 
ing his hand over the slippery surface of its 
silver scales and listening to the thrilling tale 
of its capture, recounted by Sally with as much 
spirit as though she herself had been present. 
She broke off in the middle of her story, how- 
ever, to exclaim: 

“Gracious, I’m keeping you here until 
maybe the tide will be over the causeway and 
you can’t get back. That would never do!” 

They hurried up to the house, gathered the 
berry boxes together in haste, and went to- 
ward the gate. 

“I’ll not forgive myself if I have made you 
miss the tide,” Sally said. “I think I will 
walk with you as far as the creek to make 
sure.” 

She chattered continuously as they went 
down the wooded lane, telling him what the 
different flowers and birds were, what games 


24 The Island of Appledore 

she and her brother played there among the 
trees, where her father’s land ended, and 
where Captain Saulsby’s began. 

“The Captain owns almost all of this end of 
the Island,” she said. “His father or maybe 
his grandfather built the mill and used to run 
it. There were grain fields over most of Ap- 
pledore then, and people farmed more and 
fished less. Captain Saulsby doesn’t do any- 
thing with the land except the little piece his 
house is on; he has not really lived here a 
great many years. He ran away when he was 
a boy and sailed all over the world, and only 
came back to settle down when he got too old 
to go to sea.” 

Her talk did not remain long on the subject 
of the Captain, however, but presently, in re- 
sponse to a question of Billy’s, wandered away 
to Johann Happs. 

“Yes, I know him, and I like him too. He 
comes every so often to fix our clocks, mend 
the locks and things that won’t work, sharpen 
up the tools and put us in order generally. 
He’s so cheerful and honest: there’s not a per- 
son on the Island that doesn’t admire Joe and 
trust him.” 

Billy shook his head silently ; he could make 


The Island of Appledore 25 

nothing, so far, of this strange affair of Johann 
Happs. He had not time to reflect on the 
puzzle long, for presently they met some one 
coming down the lane toward them. 

“He’s queerer than the Captain or Johann 
too,” thought Billy, and with some reason. 
The man who approached was as unusual as 
were the old sailor and Johann Happs, with 
one variation. Those two, one liked at once; 
this person it was impossible not to detest the 
moment one laid eyes upon him. 

He was small and pinched-looking, with 
greyish sandy hair and a sallow face. His 
eyes were light-coloured and shifty, seeming 
to have a rooted objection to looking straight 
at any one. Fie wore white shoes that were 
very shabby and checked clothes of a cut that 
was meant to be extremely fashionable — and 
was not. His straw hat was put on at a jaunty, 
youthful angle, but, when he took it off to 
greet Sally with a flourish, he betrayed the 
fact that he was growing bald and a little 
wrinkled. 

“Very pretty woods you have here, very 
pretty,” he observed, holding out a hand which 
obstinate Miss Sally pretended not to notice. 

“They aren’t our woods; they are Captain 


26 The Island of Appledore 

Saulsby’s,” she replied ungraciously. “His 
land begins back there.” 

“Ah, very true, Miss Shute,” the man went 
on. “He’s rather a queer one, our friend the 
Captain, now isn’t he? He hardly seems to 
remember the place is his, I think. Doesn’t 
come here very often and look after his boun- 
dary fences and all that, does he?” 

Even Billy could see that the man’s eager- 
ness betrayed him and that he asked the last 
question a shade too anxiously. Sally ob- 
served it as plain as day and had no hesitation 
about saying so. 

“If you want to find out all that so much, 
you had better ask Captain Saulsby himself,” 
she told him emphatically. “I really think 
he knows best about his own affairs.” 

“You are right,” the other agreed instantly, 
“and I will ask him. But you see,” — here he 
dropped his voice to a very confidential tone — 
“the old Captain is a hard man to do business 
with, very hard. I am trying to buy this land 
of him, not for myself, you understand, but 
for a friend, a man who is a stranger in these 
parts, and immensely wealthy. He has taken 
a fancy to Appledore Island and wants to 


The Island of Appledore 27 

build a summer home here, and an elegant 
place it is to be ; he has actually shown me the 
plans. It seems he has set his heart on buy- 
ing the mill-creek property from the Captain, 
but, dear, dear, what an obstinate creature the 
old fellow is! We have offered him a good 
price and of course he is only holding out for 
more money; but he has tried my patience al- 
most to its end. I am wondering if he has a 
clear title to all these acres he owns. You 
never heard your father say anything to that 
effect, did you, my dear?” 

He bent forward and his hard little eyes 
fairly glittered as he put the question. Sally, 
however, as a source of information, was quite 
as disappointing as Captain Saulsby. 

“Harvey Jarreth,” she announced firmly, 
“you are always going round asking questions 
about other people’s business, but I, for one, 
won’t answer them. And my father won’t 
either, and besides, he’s not at home.” 

“Very well,” returned Jarreth cheerfully, 
“very well.” 

It was evidently no new thing to him to re- 
ceive replies as tart as Sally’s. He turned on 
his heel and marched away down the lane be- 


28 The Island of Appledore 

fore them, swinging his shoulders and his cane, 
yet somehow not giving the careless effect that 
he so plainly wished. 

“Everybody hates Harvey Jarreth,” Sally 
explained when he was out of hearing. “I 
know it was not polite to talk to him so, but 
he makes me so angry that I never can help 
it. He is always getting the best of people 
and boasting about it, making money on sharp 
bargains, finding out things that aren’t his 
concern and then profiting by them. No one 
can trust him and no one can like him.” 

“Does he really want to buy Captain Sauls- 
by’s land, do you think?” Billy asked. 

“He says so. My father thinks it would 
be a good thing for the Captain if he could 
sell it, and if there really is such a person as 
Harvey Jarreth tells about, who wants to buy 
it for a house. None of us has ever seen any 
such friend of his. And Captain Saulsby is 
a queer old man; he is dreadfully poor, yet 
you can’t possibly tell whether he will agree 
or not. It would be like Mr. Jarreth to get 
the land from him some other way, if he can’t 
buy it. He is so sharp at such things and the 
Captain is so careless!” 

They had come to the mill-creek road by 


The Island of Appledore 29 

now, and were passing the door of the mill 
itself. 

“That’s a funny old place,” Billy observed. 
“Does any one live there?” 

“People lived in it a good while after it 
had stopped being used as a mill,” Sally said, 
“but it is empty now. Would you like to look 
in?” 

The big timbered door was fastened only 
by an iron latch, so there was no difficulty 
about pushing it open and peeping in. The 
whole of the lower floor was one great room, 
with a crooked flight of rickety stairs at the 
back, leading up to the second story. The 
windows were small, making the interior full 
of shadows and very cool and dark after the 
hot sunshine outside. There was a big fire- 
place of rough stones, a bench near it, a table 
and a broken chair or two, with a three-legged 
stool in the chimney corner. 

“Jacky and I come here to play some- 
times,” said Sally, “although he doesn’t like 
it much. People used to say it was haunted, 
but of course that’s nonsense. Still it is pretty 
dark and queer and rather too full of strange 
creakings when you are alone.” 

They closed the door again, went down the 


30 The Island of Appledore 

steps and along the road and parted on the 
beach. 

“I’m glad you came,” said Sally; “you 
must come again. Now hurry, or the tide will 
catch you. I think Harvey Jarreth has gone 
on to Captain Saulsby’s ahead of you. Good- 
bye.” 

As Billy hastened across the stepping- 
stones and through the meadow, he looked 
very sharply and very often down toward the 
rocks, but could see no signs of any one’s pres- 
ence. Sally was right; Harvey Jarreth had 
gone ahead of him and was standing now by 
the bench near the hedge, in hot dispute with 
the old Captain. 

“I never saw a man so blind to his own inter- 
ests,” he was saying. “I believe you are out 
of your senses. Come now, say what figure 
you will really take.” 

“You could cover the land with gold pieces 
for me and I wouldn’t sell,” returned the old 
sailor with determination. “I’m not saying 
that it isn’t a good offer for me in some ways, 
but I will part with no property to a man who 
won’t give his name or state his business. If 
I’m to take his money, I must know where it 
comes from.” 


The Island of Appledore 31 

“It is perfectly natural that my friend 
should ask me not to give his name,” Jarreth 
insisted. “And as for the money, what do 
you care where it comes from, just so you make 
something? What do you want with all those 
acres your father left you, when you only can 
dig up one corner of it to plant a few miser- 
able poppies in?” 

“What does your friend want of it?” re- 
torted the Captain ; “and by the way, how does 
it happen you have such a friend? How long 
have you known him?” 

“Why — why, not long,” admitted Jarreth, 
“but he’s all right, I know that, and able to 
buy the whole of Appledore Island twice over. 
Well, I suppose you are standing out for a big- 
ger price and I will just have to tell him so.” 

“I’m standing out for nothing of the sort, 
you everlasting lunkhead,” roared the old 
man, completely exasperated, “and I’ll waste 
no more time talking to you.” 

“I’ll just step up to the house and rest a lit- 
tle there in the shade,” Jarreth said. “I have 
a long walk home, so I might as well give you 
time first to think this well over. You will 
see reason in the end.” 

The Captain made no reply, but deliberately 


32 The Island of Appledore 

turned his back upon Jarreth as he walked 
away, and began puffing furiously at his pipe. 

“Well, Billy Wentworth,” he said, taking 
his first notice of the boy, who had stood wait- 
ing until the altercation should end, “how 
did you like Sally Shute?” 

“I liked her lots,” Billy replied with en- 
thusiasm, “and I am glad I went. Here are 
your boxes : I will carry them up to the house.” 

“Sit down a bit until I finish my pipe,” 
the Captain said. “That persistent cuss is 
waiting up there at the cottage and we may 
as well let him cool his heels a while. His 
time isn’t worth anything except to think up 
mischief.” 

Billy took his place on the bench beside the 
old sailor and sat staring out to sea. 

“What is Johann Happs doing out there in 
his boat?” he inquired at last. “Is he going to 
sail her?” 

“I think not today,” Captain Saulsby an- 
swered. “He is always working out there at 
something or other. He is as fond of her as 
though she were his own kin. He hasn’t any 
one belonging to him, maybe that is why he 
loves her so.” 

Just at this moment a small boy came loung- 


The Island of Appledore 33 

ing down the path with as little hurry as 
though all the world were waiting for him. 
He was short and fat and looked so much like 
a lesser edition of Sally that there could be no 
doubt of his being Jacky Shute. 

“I’m just a-goin’ to weed those onions, Cap- 
tain Saulsby,” he said hastily, to prevent the 
old sailor’s speaking first. “I stayed down 
by the wharf a little late, fishing, but there’s 
plenty of time yet. It’s not five o’clock.” 

He scurried away across the garden, leav- 
ing the Captain sputtering with helpless in- 
dignation. 

“That’s the kind of helper I have,” he ex- 
claimed. “Comes when he likes, goes when 
he likes, does what he likes. His mother and 
Sally can’t do a thing with him. And stupid! 
Why, there’s nothing you can teach him, no 
matter how you try. He has fished and pad- 
died along this shore all his life, but he doesn’t 
know a thing about boats; he can’t tell the 
difference between a sloop and a knockabout. 
And what’s more, — ” here the old man turned 
full upon Billy and dropped his voice as 
though he hated to speak so dreadful a thing 
aloud — “what’s more, he says he doesn’t want 
to know.” 


34 The Island of Appledore 

Billy opened his mouth to say something 
in reply, and then shut it again. He realized 
that the ignorance of which the Captain spoke 
was as great as would be the inability to dis- 
tinguish between a dog and a cat, but he was 
unwilling to betray the fact that he was as 
much in the dark as Jacky Shute. A few 
hours ago he would have been quite scornful 
of any such knowledge; now he felt a strong 
desire to hide his ignorance, a desire which, in 
turn, gave way to an even greater wish. He 
fought against it, reminded himself over and 
over again how determined he was to despise 
everything that had to do with the sea, how 
he hated Appledore and would have no in- 
terest in it. But there was something about 
the rough old sailor’s bent figure, broken by 
a hundred tempests yet strong and determined 
still, there was something about the tossing 
blue water, about the wide, unbroken horizon, 
about the fresh, sharp, salt air that made him 
feel — well, different in a most indefinable way. 

They sat in silence for a little while until 
the old man’s pipe was smoked out, and Billy 
felt that it was time for him to go. He rose, 
held out his hand to say good-bye, and then 


The Island of Appledore 35 

suddenly felt his wish so strong within him 
that it broke forth into words. 

“Captain Saulsby,” he said, “I don’t know 
the difference between a sloop and a knock- 
about, either. I don’t know anything about 
the sea or about boats. I wish you would 
teach me.” 

The sailor’s gnarled old brown hand was 
laid very gently on his shoulder. 

“Bless you, how should you know,” he an- 
swered ; “you that never saw salt water before 
today? Sure, I’ll teach you anything I know; 
sit right down again and listen.” 

Miss Mattie Pearson, up at the hotel, must 
have rocked and knitted and knitted and 
rocked a long, long time that day as she 
watched for her nephew’s return. The bright 
red sock that she was making for the Belgians 
grew several inches, the other guests went in 
to dinner, but still she waited, nor did she seem 
impatient. She was spare and elderly and 
beginning to be white-haired; she might have 
answered well enough to Billy’s description 
of her as an “old maid aunt” but she had keen 
grey eyes that had been able to look pretty 
deeply into her nephew’s rebellious young 


36 The Island of Appledore 

soul. He had been sullen and discontented 
ever since his arrival that morning and, if he 
had made any efforts to conceal his state of 
mind, they had not been successful ones. So 
she had sent him off in the direction of Cap- 
tain Saulsby’s house and seemed not in the 
least surprised or displeased that he was so 
long in coming back. Old maid aunts some- 
times have a way of knowing things, just from 
the fact that they have lived so long. 

Meanwhile Billy was still sitting on the 
bench listening, entranced, to details of full- 
rigged ships, schooners, yawls, raceabouts and 
dories. His head began to reel under the 
weight of all the knowledge poured out upon 
him, so that, finally, it was only with mighty 
effort that he followed what the Captain was 
saying. Even the old sailor realized this at 
length and decided to have mercy. 

“I will tell you what we can do,” he said. 
“We will make you a model ; schooner-rigged, 
we will have her, with everything complete 
and shipshape, so that you can learn the ropes 
too well ever to forget them. No,” as Billy 
tried to remonstrate, “of course I will have 
time. What is an old man good for, when he 
can’t follow the sea any longer, but to hand on 


The Island of Appledore 37 

what he knows to some one who will do him 
credit some day? Yes, we will build you a 
model and she shall be called the Josephine , 
after the first ship I ever sailed in; the finest 
one that ever crossed the seas.” 

As Billy finally took his way homeward, 
his mind was a seething mass of nautical terms 
which he vainly tried to set in order. 

“The gaff holds the top of the mainsail,” 
he was saying to himself, “and the jib- 
boom — ” 

Here he was obliged to interrupt the repe- 
tition of his lesson by laughing aloud at the 
memory of his last view of Captain Saulsby. 
Harvey Jarreth had been waiting at the cot- 
tage, true to his word, so that Billy’s final 
sight of the two had shown him the little eager 
man still pouring out a flood of argument, 
while the Captain sat unconcernedly darning 
his blue sock once more, and whistling as gaily 
as though Jarreth and his real-estate project 
were a thousand miles away. 

However, just before Billy passed out 
through the gap in the wall, he saw something 
that drove both lesson and laughter completely 
from his mind. He had stopped to take one 
more look at the little house, the sloping gar- 


38 The Island of Appledore 

den, the steep rocks running out into the foam- 
ing surf and at Johann Happs’ trim little boat 
riding at anchor just inside the harbour. One 
glance showed him clearly that the vessel was 
in distress, but how or why he could not tell. 
She seemed to be settling slowly in the water, 
indeed had already sunk so deep that the waves 
were breaking over her. And, strangest of 
all, Johann Happs was standing, with folded 
arms, upon the beach, staring at her but quite 
unmoving, never lifting a hand to rescue his 
beloved boat. 


CHAPTER III 


THE CRUISE OF THE JOSEPHINE 

The North Atlantic fleet of the United 
States Navy was playing its war game off the 
coast of New England, with a large part of 
the manoeuvres apparently arranged for the 
especial benefit of the visitors on Appledore 
Island. For three days ships had been ply- 
ing steadily back and forth in the offing; huge 
dreadnaughts whose like Billy had never seen 
before, smaller cruisers and swift slender de- 
stroyers that ran in and out amongst the rest 
of the fleet like greyhounds. Even the knit- 
ting brigade on the hotel verandah deserted 
its usual task of rocking and gossiping and 
plying swift needles for the relief of the Bel- 
gians, and instead came down to the wharf to 
stare out to sea, to wonder what this boat was, 
or what that ship could be doing, and what it 
was all about anyway. The one or two men 
in the company were able to tell much of just 
what the whole plan was, and just what each 

39 


40 The Island of Appledore 

division of the fleet was trying to do to the 
other. Unfortunately none of these learned 
dissertations on naval strategy ever seemed to 
agree, and the eager questioners went back to 
their watching rather more puzzled than be- 
fore. 

Two young naval officers were actually 
quartered at the Appledore Hotel, but they 
spent all their time observing the ships’ move- 
ments from the highest point of the island, or 
signalling from one of the headlands. When 
they could be stopped and questioned they 
seemed to display such pitiful ignorance 
alongside of the fluent knowledge of the lec- 
turers on the wharf that it hardly seemed 
worth while to ask them anything. 

The first three days had been dull and 
foggy, making the manoeuvres even more con- 
fusing than usual to the uninstructed mind; 
so Billy, who had done his best to have no in- 
terest in the matter, finally proclaimed loudly 
that the whole business was a great bore and 
that he would waste no more time, in watching 
it. But on the fourth day, a clear cloudless 
one, with brisk winds and a sea so bright that 
it fairly hurt your eyes to look at it, he went 
down to see his friend Captain Saulsby and 


The Island of Appledore 41 

found that he, too, was caught by the fascina- 
tion of this same war game. 

“I wish I could see the way I used to,” the 
old man sighed as he put down his battered 
telescope — Billy felt better about him when 
he found that he actually had one — and leaned 
back in his chair by the door. “That ship 
that’s going by now is either the Kentucky or 
the Alabama and for the life of me I can’t tell 
which. I’ve watched them off this point for 
a lot of years now, and never could see so lit- 
tle before. I do believe,” — he spoke as 
though the suspicion had only just occurred 
to him — “that I’m getting old!” 

A week ago Billy might have felt inclined 
to laugh at any one who was so bowed down 
with years but who seemed so surprised on 
discovering the fact. Now, however, he had 
become too fast a friend of the Captain’s for 
that. A man who could endure pain as un- 
falteringly as Captain Saulsby did, who, al- 
though nearly a cripple, could still work for 
his scanty living and never complain of the 
toil and hardship, such a person was not to be 
laughed at. 

Moreover, on the Captain’s knee was the 
model of the boat that was to teach Billy 


42 The Island of Appledore 

something of seamanship, the Josephine , a 
very marvel of graceful lines and intricate 
rigging. Such loving, patient care as had 
gone into the building of the little craft only 
those two would ever know. The Captain’s 
rough thick fingers had worked wonders; 
Billy’s impatient, unskilled ones had done 
their full share. The two had had long talks 
together over their labours, in which the boy 
had learned much of odd sounding names and 
strange sea terms, but more of the adventures 
and hardships and restlessness of the life of 
diose who follow the sea. 

He did not admit to himself yet that he 
liked the sea, or that he was anything but 
disappointed and angry that he must spend his 
summer on the Island of Appledore, but he 
could not deny that there was a charm in the 
company of the old captain and that his stories 
of all that happened off this bit of rugged, 
rocky coast; of the smugglers that had hidden 
in the little harbour below the mill, of the 
privateers that had lain behind the island 
waiting until the enemy should pass, of the 
wrecks and daring rescues by the fishermen 
of the Island, all these were tales of which 
he never tired. He was full of questions to 


The Island of Appledore 43 

ask today, and wanted first of all to know what 
the war game really meant. 

“It’s just practice,” Captain Saulsby ex- 
plained, “just to learn what to do if there was 
real war. Over across the sea they’re play- 
ing the game in earnest; a mistake there means 
a lost ship and the crew drowned, and a greater 
danger to the country they’re guarding like 
grim death. Please Heaven we won’t have 
that over here, but there’s many that are say- 
ing it is coming with another year.” 

“War — us!” exclaimed Billy incredulously. 
“Why, surely we couldn’t have war!” 

“It could come mighty easy,” the Captain 
insisted, “but well, it’s not here yet and that’s 
something to be thankful for. But in this war 
game, they bring the fleet out for manoeu- 
vres and they play out their problems in naval 
tactics like a great big match of chess, with 
dreadnaughts and destroyers and submarines 
for the pieces and the whole wide ocean for 
their board. They divide up into two fleets 
and each one tries to destroy the other. 
There’s no real sinking, you understand, but, 
for instance, a torpedo-boat tries to creep up 
to a battleship in the dark, and send up a 
rocket to show that she’s supposed to have fired 


44 The Island of Appledore 

a torpedo, then if she’s near enough for an 
undoubted hit, why that vessel is counted as 
sunk. Or if the battleship finds her with the 
searchlights and she is so close that she could 
be smashed with a volley from the guns, why, 
it’s the torpedo-boat that’s sunk. So it goes.” 

“It sounds to me pretty silly,” remarked 
Billy with some disdain. 

“Wait until you’ve played it once, son,” re- 
turned the sailor. “When you creep along in 
the dark to make an attack, or put on every 
ounce of steam you can to get away, when you 
know that each man must do his own part the 
best way he knows how, and that the honour 
of his ship may hang on every move he makes, 
why you forget a little that it’s just a game. 
When it’s over you surely come down with 
a bump, you have been so sure all along that 
it was the real thing.” 

Billy considered the matter idly for a lit- 
tle, scorning to show too much interest, even 
in spite of Captain Saulsby’s enthusiasm. 
The old sailor himself seemed to be full of 
other thoughts, for when he spoke again it 
was as much to himself as to Billy. 

“I wish I knew whatever could have sunk 


The Island of Appledore 45 

Johann’s boat,” he said. “There was no storm 
nor any accident, and he certainly kept her 
in such good order that there was no chance 
of her having sprung a leak without his know- 
ing it. The poor fellow surely loved her; he 
seems broken-hearted whenever you talk to 
him about her sinking, but he doesn’t do a 
thing to try to raise her. I don’t understand 
it.” 

It had seemed very strange to Billy also, 
especially in the light of what he had seen 
that day upon the shore. He made no com- 
ment now, however; indeed he had scarcely 
been listening, but had let his wandering wits 
take a sudden jump in the direction of quite 
different matters. When the old man had 
finished speaking he put a question that, had 
he known more of the ways of the sea and of 
sailor men, he would never have dared to ask. 

“Captain Saulsby,” he said, “what were you 
captain of? Was it in the Navy or just of the 
Josephine?” 

“Bless you, no; not in the Navy or of the 
Josephine , either,” replied his friend. “The 
Josephine was the first ship I ever sailed on 
when I was an apprentice boy, and the cap- 


46 The Island of Appledore 

tain of her was such a great man that he hardly 
knew I was on board. No, I wasn’t captain 
of the Josephine ” 

“Well,” insisted Billy, not to be put off, 
“what ship were you captain of?” 

Captain Saulsby heaved a great sigh and 
was silent for a long time. He took up the 
little model from his knee and turned it over 
and over before he spoke. 

“No, not of the Josephine ” he said again, 
“although I fully intended to be. Do you see 
that little catboat riding at anchor down by 
the wharf; the old, old grey one that’s needed 
a coat of paint these two years past and a new 
sail for at least five? Well, that’s the only 
craft that Ned Saulsby ever was skipper of, 
or ever will be.” 

He made this statement very abruptly and 
fell immediately to work on stepping a mast of 
the little vessel. 

“There’s a lot of kind-hearted folks in the 
world,” he went on after a pause, “and some 
of them started calling me ‘Captain’ about 
the time my rheumatism got so bad that I 
could never go to sea again. They thought 
giving me the name would make me feel bet- 


The Island of Appledore 47 

ter, and I guess it did, perhaps. When 
you’ve followed the sea since you were hardly 
more than so high, and suffered by it, won and 
lost by it, hated it and loved it, why it’s not 
easy to find out, all of a sudden, that you’ve 
got to stop on shore for all the rest of your 
days.” 

Billy would have pursued the subject fur- 
ther, but the old man changed the course of 
the talk. He took up the model of the Jo- 
sephine and set it down upon the doorstep be- 
side the boy. 

“Now, young fellow,” he said cheerily, 
“suppose you name over these ropes as far 
as we have gone, and we’ll see if you are as 
much of a landlubber as you were when you 
came here a week ago.” 

Billy, nothing loth, took up the challenge 
and went through his lesson with great credit, 
making nothing of naming the parts of the 
rigging of the little schooner and of running 
off lightly many terms that had so lately been 
pure Greek to him. 

“Good,” said the old man when he had fin- 
ished. “I do believe that you can hope to be 
a sailor yet.” 


48 The Island of Appledore 

He said it with such confidence that this 
must surely be Billy’s one ambition, that the 
boy made haste to correct him. 

“I’m not going to be a sailor ever,” he said. 
“I’m going into business and — and make a 
pile of money.” 

Captain Saulsby did not answer at once, 
for he was staring out beyond the point where 
one of the big battleships had chanced to come 
close in and was steaming by at full speed. 
Billy could see the tremendous wave that 
surged up before her bow; he watched the 
cloud of drifting smoke that poured from her 
funnels and he had suddenly a vision of what 
gigantic power must drive her so swiftly 
through the sea. It gave him a queer thrill, 
unlike anything that he had ever felt before, 
and, oddly enough, seemed to fill him with a 
sudden doubt as to the wisdom of his choice 
of a career. Buying and selling and making 
money might after all prove a dull occupation. 
Were there after all bigger things than Big 
Business? Such a question had never oc- 
curred to him before. 

“Now,” said the Captain, interrupting his 
reverie, “you just tell your aunt to come down 


The Island of Appledore 49 

on the beach this afternoon and see the best 
boat this side of Cape Hatteras put to sea. 
These good warm days have baked some of the 
rheumatism out of me and I’m almost as good 
a man as you this morning. We’ll go down 
to the rocks below the willows there and put 
the Josephine into the water. I hope she’ll 
sail as pretty as she looks.” 

It was a great occasion, the launching of 
the Josephine. Aunt Mattie attended it, and 
broke a bottle of cologne over the little ves- 
sel’s newly painted bow, to make a formal 
christening. There was a fresh wind that 
flecked the water with dancing white caps on 
one side of the point, but on the other, inside 
the harbour, afforded the best sort of breeze 
for a maiden trip. The sails were hoisted, the 
rudder adjusted and the little boat breathlessly 
lowered off the edge of a rock. She rocked 
and dipped upon the ripples in a bit of quiet 
water, then was pushed out until the wind 
caught her new white sails. How they curved 
to the breeze, how she heeled over just as a real 
vessel should and skimmed away as though 
she had a sailor at her helm and had set her 
course for far and foreign lands! The cord 


50 The Island of Appledore 

by which she was held trailed out behind her, 
grew taut, and at last brought her successful 
journey sharply to an end. 

“Pull her in and we’ll try her on a different 
tack,” directed Captain Saulsby much ex- 
cited; “she surely can sail! We didn’t hit it 
wrong when we named her the Josephine ” 

Billy, who had no leanings of sentiment to- 
ward the name of Captain Saulsby’s well-be- 
loved first ship, had felt that Josephine was 
not the most perfect title in the world for his 
new and cherished vessel. Captain Saulsby, 
however, had seemed so hurt and disappointed 
when he even hinted at the possibility of an- 
other choice, that the idea had been dropped 
at once. Certainly the little boat was doing 
her best to be worthy of her so-famous name- 
sake. 

“I wish I had a longer string,” said Billy; 
“it seems as though she only got a good start 
every time before I have to pull her in again.” 

“She doesn’t have any chance to show what 
she can do,” answered the Captain, regarding 
his handiwork with as proud and pleased an 
eye as did Billy himself. “Here, now, the 
wind is right and the tide is running in; why 
shouldn’t we just launch her and let her sail 


The Island of Appledore 51 

across the harbour. She will come ashore, 
surely, on that bit of sandy beach and we can 
walk round and pick her up. That will give 
her a chance to do a bit of real sailing.” 

The plan was readily agreed to by all con- 
cerned, apparently with the most heartiness 
by the Josephine herself. She dipped and 
danced irresolutely for a moment when first 
she was launched upon her new voyage, then 
spread her sails to the wind and scudded off 
like a racing yacht. Even Aunt Mattie joined 
in the chorus of cheers that celebrated the 
triumphant setting sail. Captain Saulsby’s 
rheumatism seemed completely forgotten as 
he set off along the shore path to meet the 
boat when she came to port, with Aunt Mattie 
walking beside him. 

Billy, lagging a little behind, looked up 
suddenly toward the rocks above him and 
caught a movement of something behind the 
biggest of the stones. The brown mink per- 
haps it was, but — possibly — something else. 
He climbed up to investigate, but found the 
rocks were slippery and not easy to scale, and 
that the smooth surface was hot under his 
hands. He reached the top of the biggest one 
at last and, not much to his surprise, found 


52 The Island of Appledore 

no one there. Not a sign could he see of any 
presence but his own. He had been foolish 
to climb up — but wait — what was that? 

Wet footprints showed on the grey stone 
surface, as though somebody had but now 
walked across the weed-fringed rocks, uncov- 
ered by the half tide, and had then crossed 
the drier space above. Such marks would 
only last for a moment under this hot sun; 
indeed, they faded and disappeared even as 
he stood staring at them. What was that 
gleam of sunlight on metal just beyond that 
stone? He went quickly to see and discov- 
ered a pair of field glasses, binoculars of the 
highest power, lying half tumbled out of their 
case, as though dropped in hasty flight. He 
picked them up, adjusted them to his eyes 
with some slight difficulty and turned them 
out to sea. At first he saw only a dazzling 
expanse of blue sky, then, as he shifted, an 
equally dazzling glare of blue water. Then 
quite by chance, the glass fell upon the war- 
ship, and he could see the sparkle of her shin- 
ing brass work, the blue uniforms of tiny fig- 
ures moving on her deck, the black gaping 
mouths of her big guns. He laid the glasses 
upon a ledge of rock, so that he should not 


The Island of Appledore 53 

break them as he clambered down to a lower 
level. It was not easy climbing and he had 
to watch his footing carefully. Once below 
he reached up to get the binoculars down, 
failed to touch them and reached again. Still 
the rock was bare to his hand so he scrambled 
up to see what was the matter. The ledge 
was empty, they were gone! 

Billy had a sudden feeling that it would be 
pleasant to rejoin Captain Saulsby and his 
Aunt as soon as it was possible. He was not 
afraid but — well such things were queer. 
There was something warmly comforting 
about the old sailor’s hearty laugh as it came 
drifting back to him. He hurried quickly 
after the two with the unpleasant feeling that 
a pair of peering black eyes were watching 
him from somewhere as he passed along. 

Miss Pearson had elected not to meet the 
Josephine when she came to port, but had 
turned aside to go down to the steamboat land- 
ing. She was going to Boston by the after- 
noon boat and had just heard the whistle call- 
ing her on board. She waved good-bye to 
Billy but motioned him to follow the Captain, 
who was trudging on alone. Billy would 
have come down to see her off, none the less, 


54 The Island of Appledore 

had he not suddenly noticed something that 
knocked both the departure of Aunt Mattie 
and the affair of the field-glasses completely 
out of his head. 

“Oh, look, Captain Saulsby,” he cried; 
“look what’s happened to the Josephine!” 

Not one of them had noticed that the wind 
had changed. But the little Josephine had, 
for she had altered her course and instead of 
heading for the sandy beach opposite, was 
speeding away for the harbour’s mouth and 
the open sea. The breeze was steadily fresh- 
ening, the little boat as steadily gathering 
headway, so that it would not be long before 
she would pass the headland and be out of 
sight. 

“Oh, stop her,” cried Billy, in frantic ex- 
citement. “Oh, isn’t there any way to stop 
her.” 

The old man was quite as distressed as he. 

“We can’t lose her,” he exclaimed; “we 
never could lose the Josephine!” He stood 
gazing helplessly after the fast-vanishing little 
vessel. “What on earth can we do?” 

He thought a minute and then turned to 
hurry awkwardly down the path toward the 
wharf. 


The Island of Appledore 55 

“We’ll take my cat-boat,” he said; “she’s 
not been sailed for a month of Sundays but 
she’s seaworthy all right. The Josephine may 
have the start of us while we’re getting up 
sail, but we’ll catch her in the end.” 

It was wonderful what short work the old 
captain made of seizing upon a dory, rowing 
out to the little cat-boat that bobbed in the 
tide, boarding her and getting up sail. Billy’s 
assistance was willing but extremely awkward, 
so that he hindered far more than he helped. 
At length, however, they were under weigh, 
riding gaily the gradually rising waves, and 
skimming along in the wake of the fleeing 
Josephine . 

Captain Saulsby’s burst of energy seemed 
to wear itself out with surprising quickness. 
Once they were well started he put the tiller 
into Billy’s hand and went and sat down in 
the cockpit. 

“I’m an old man,” he said gloomily. “I’m 
not a sailor any longer, just an old man, and 
good for nothing.” 

Billy hardly heard him, so intent was he 
upon the responsibility of steering the boat. 
She was a clumsy little craft with a rather 
daring expanse of sail, she cut through the 


56 The Island of Appledore 

water swiftly but was not easy to keep upon 
her course. The tiller jerked and kicked un- 
der his hand; there were times when he could 
scarcely hold it, and when the bow veered 
threateningly to one side or another. The 
Captain paid little attention to his difficulties 
but sat hunched up in his corner staring idly 
before him. 

“There’s a shoal place here off the head- 
land,” he remarked at last; “you’ll have to 
make two or three tacks to get around it. 
That pesky Josephine can sail right over and 
will get more of a start than ever. If the tide 
were half an hour higher I would risk follow- 
ing. Now we’ve come so far we’ve got to get 
her.” 

“But — but — what do I do?” inquired Billy, 
quite bewildered at the task set him. A boy 
who has never sailed a boat before finds sud- 
denly a whole world of things that he would 
like to know. 

“Why, nothing but just come up into the 
wind, loose the sheet, lay your new course over 
toward the lighthouse there. Now’s the 
minute — Ready about I” 

Somehow, Billy never quite knew how, the 
thing was done. The bow swung round, the 


The Island of Appledore 57 

big sail fluttered and trembled a moment, then 
came over with a rush, and the catboat was off 
on her new tack. To Billy it seemed as 
though the wind had totally changed in direc- 
tion, as though the small vessel were tipping 
dangerously, and as though anything might 
happen at any moment, but he kept manfully 
silent about it all. If this was the way one 
learned to sail a boat, he supposed that he 
could master it as well as another. 

Captain Saulsby seemed to be totally un- 
aware of his torment of mind. He still sat, 
gazing moodily out to sea and saying not a 
word. 

“You’d better come about now,” he re- 
marked suddenly when they had sailed some 
distance toward the lighthouse. After an in- 
stant of indecision and fumbling awkwardness, 
come about Billy did, with more ease this time, 
but no great knowledge of just what was hap- 
pening. Once more they stood off on the new 
course, the tubby little craft rising and dip- 
ping bravely, Billy clinging to the tiller and 
beginning to feel suddenly that the boat was 
a live thing under his hand, ready to do his 
slightest bidding. 

“Once more,” ordered Captain Saulsby 


58 The Island of Appledore 

when it was time to tack, and this time Billy 
accomplished it without a hitch. 

“Captain Saulsby,” he cried in beaming de- 
light, “I can sail her, I know how to sail her!” 

A slow broad grin illuminated Captain 
Saulsby’s mahogany-colored countenance. 

“I thought you could,” he said slowly, “but 
it was a little ticklish at first, wasn’t it? And, 
good Heavens, the wake you leave!” 

Billy glanced backward at the line upon the 
water that marked the pathway of his course. 

“It’s not very straight,” he admitted, “but 
the waves have mussed it up some. Oh, but 
it’s great to sail a boat!” 

The wind hummed in the rounding curve 
of the sail, the waves slapped and splashed 
along the boat’s side, the Island of Appledore 
fell away behind them, and they came out 
into the full sweep of the open sea. Aunt 
Mattie’s steamer was a black speck off toward 
the south, trailing a long, thin line of smoke. 
The sun that had shone so hot vanished pres- 
ently behind a cloud, the water seemed to be a 
shade less blue, the little white sail of the fugi- 
tive Josephine seemed now and then to show 
mockingly ahead of them and now to disap- 
pear entirely. On they sped and on and on, 


The Island of Appledore 59 

while Billy with the wind blowing through his 
hair and with his hand upon the quivering 
tiller, felt that he was quite the happiest boy in 
the world. 

“Tell me, Captain Saulsby,” he asked idly 
at last, “what makes the water look so queer 
over there to the north?” 

The Captain, who had been puffing comfort- 
ably upon his pipe and had almost, it seemed, 
fallen into a doze, turned slowly and awk- 
wardly to look where Billy pointed. In the 
twinkling of an eye he became transformed 
into a different man. 

“Old fool that I am,” he cried, “sitting here 
and not keeping a look-out! Half asleep I 
must have been and in such tricky weather, 
too.” 

He sprang up and was at Billy’s side in 
one movement. What pain such activity must 
have cost him it would be hard to tell; his 
weather-beaten face turned almost pale, and 
drops of moisture stood on his forehead. He 
seized the tiller and gave Billy a sharp suc- 
cession of orders, which the poor boy was too 
bewildered to more than half understand. 

“Cast off that rope, not that one, no, no, the 
other, quick, oh, if only I could reach it!” 


60 The Island of Appledore 

He groaned aloud, not so much with the 
pain he must have felt, but with the helpless 
impatience of knowing himself to be unequal 
to the crisis. The deeper blue streak of water 
that Billy had pointed out, became rapidly 
darker and darker until it was grey, then 
black, and came rushing toward them at furi- 
ous speed. The litle cat-boat swung round to 
meet it. Billy tugged manfully at the sheet 
and noticed, with sudden consternation, that 
the strands of the rope had been frayed against 
the cleat and showed a dangerously weak 
place. 

“What shall I do?” he cried. “Look, 
quick — ” but he spoke too late. 

The squall struck them, the sheet parted 
with a crack like a pistol shot and in an instant 
the great sail was flapping backward and for- 
ward over their heads like a mad thing. The 
heavy boom swung over and then back with 
sickening jerks, the old rotten mast groaned, 
creaked, then suddenly, with a splintering 
crash, went overboard dragging with it a mass 
of cordage and canvas. 

In wild haste Captain Saulsby and Billy 
strove to cut away the wreckage, but they were 
not quick enough. The boat heeled over 


The Island of Appledore 61 

farther and farther, the water came pouring 
in over the gunwale. There was a harrowing 
moment of suspense, then their little craft 
turned completely over, throwing them both 
into the water, amid the tangle of sail and rig- 
ging. 


CHAPTER IV. 


CAPTAIN SAULSBY’S WATCH 

For full half a minute Billy was quite cer- 
tain that he was drowned and did not like it at 
all. The wet ropes and the heavy canvas 
clung to him, apparently determined that once 
he went down he should never come up again. 
For a gasping moment he managed to get his 
head above water, had a sharp, clear vision of 
the wide sea, the cloudy sky and Appledore 
Island with its green slopes and wooded hills: 
then he went down again. His next attempt 
was more fortunate, however, for he came up 
clear of the wreckage and not far from the 
boat, which was still afloat, bottom upwards. 
He swam to her in a few strokes and, after 
one or two efforts, managed to clamber up her 
slippery hull. What was his joy and relief, 
on scrambling high enough to peer over the 
centreboard, to see Captain Saulsby slowly and 
laboriously crawling up the other side. 

“Give us a hand up, boy,” he said a little 
breathless, but speaking in the calmest and 

62 


The Island of Appledore 63 

cheeriest of tones. “I’m not so spry as I used 
to be, but I’ll make it all right — er — ouch, but 
those barnacles are sharp. I should never 
have let the boat get such a foul bottom. 
Now,” as he came up beside Billy, “there we 
are as fine as you please. We’ll just have to 
wait a couple of hours, and some one will be 
sure to pick us up. There’s nothing to worry 
about in a little spill like this. See, the 
squall’s gone by and the clouds are clearing 
away already.” 

Billy looked about him and was not so sure. 
To be perched upon the keel of a capsized 
boat, rocking precariously with every wave, to 
have miles of empty ocean on every side is a 
little disturbing the first time you try it. So at 
least he concluded as he watched the sun drop 
slowly toward the horizon. 

The war game had drifted away to the 
north, so that, for the first time in days, there 
was not a vessel of any kind in sight. Above 
them the clouds were assuredly blowing away, 
but over in the west another bank of them, 
thick and grey and threatening, was rising very 
slowly to meet the sun. There could also be 
little doubt that the wind was steadily fresh- 
ening and the waves splashing higher and 


64 The Island of Appledore 

higher along the sides of their little boat. All 
these things Captain Saulsby seemed cheer- 
fully determined to ignore, so Billy decided 
that it was best for him to say nothing.” 

“I’ve had a lot of little adventures like this 
in my day,” the old sailor went on. “It makes 
me feel quite young again to be in just one 
more. Why, the first time was when a sampan 
capsized when we were landing from the 
Josephine in the harbor of Hongkong. I’ll 
never forget how I laughed out loud with the 
queer, warm tickle of the water, when I’d 
thought for sure it was going to be icy cold. I 
couldn’t have been much bigger than that.” 

He tried to hold up a hand to show Billy 
the exact height he had been, but so nearly lost 
his balance in the process that he was obliged 
to clutch hastily at the slippery support again. 

“Did you really go to sea when you were so 
little?” Billy asked. “I wonder your people 
let you.” 

“They weren’t any too willing,” returned 
the Captain; “in fact, they weren’t willing at 
all. My folks were like yours, though you 
wouldn’t think it; they were people with book- 
learning, doctors and lawyers and the like. 
They wanted me to be the same, and when I 


The Island of Appledore 65 

wouldn’t, but was all for going to sea, they said 
very well, a sailor I could be, but first I must 
go to school, for sailors must have learning 
too. But I couldn’t wait; the wish for the 
blue water was in my very blood, so I slipped 
away and shipped for China before they knew 
it. That was a hard voyage in some ways, but 
a wonder of a one in others, and when I came 
home I would listen to nothing they said, but 
was off and away again before I had been in 
port much more than a week.” 

“And you’ve sailed and sailed and sailed 
ever since?” Billy asked. A sharp dip of the 
boat nearly upset him but he managed to speak 
calmly. He thought it a good plan to keep 
the old man talking that he might not notice 
the rising clouds behind him. 

“Yes, sometimes on sailing ships and some- 
times on steamers, in every trade and bound 
for every port on earth. I drifted into the 
Navy at last, and was a bluejacket on just such 
a battleship as we saw go by today, and it was 
in that service that I first began to see what a 
mistake I had made. There were, among the 
young officers, boys not half my age, but know- 
ing four times more than I ever would. I had 
to salute when they spoke to me, and I was 


66 The Island of Appledore 

glad to do it, for it is the like of them and 
not the like of me that makes the big ships go. 
I vowed then that I would turn to and learn 
something, that I would study navigation yet 
and have a ship of my own some day. But I 
didn’t stick to it. I drifted here and drifted 
there, lost or spent my money the day after I 
got to port, and had to ship again in any berth 
I could. 

“When I was here in New England I was 
always longing for a sight of palm trees, and 
the hot sandy beaches, and the brown people 
and their queer-built houses round the har- 
bours at Singapore or Bankok or Bombay. 
But when I was there I was somehow always 
thinking of how our great, cool, grey rocks 
looked along this coast with the surf tumbling 
below and the pine covered hills behind them. 
I would remember the smell of bayberry and 
sweetbriar and mayflowers and think it would 
be the breath of life to me. So it was al- 
ways, drifting first in one direction and 
then in another, until I came to port at last 
with less than I had when I put to sea. When 
I started out in life I was bound I would be a 
sea-captain before I was twenty: now that I 
am nearly four times that it hurts me still to 


The Island of Appledore 67 

think that the chance is gone forever. It’s a 
nice end for a man who once thought the sea 
was all his very own!” 

“Was it hard to make up your mind to stay 
ashore?” asked Billy. He was watching the 
bank of clouds that had spread across the 
western sky and praying the Captain would 
keep on talking. The sun had begun to dip 
into the mass of heavy grey, and was sending 
up long shafts of red-gold light. 

“It wasn’t so bad the day the doctor told 
me that I could never go out of port again,” 
Captain Saulsby said; “the hard life had done 
for me and the sharp sea winds had bitten so 
deep into my bones that I knew, long before 
he said so, that my usefulness was done. 
No, the end really came a year before when 
I found, all of a sudden, that the sailor I 
thought I was, the Ned Saulsby who could 
face any hardship, do any duty without falter- 
ing and without tiring, that he was gone as 
completely as though he had died. 

“It was on the schooner Mary Jameson, 
bound out of Portland with lumber and coal. 
We had had fearful weather for three days 
out, blowing so hard that there was no peace 
or rest for any one. We were all dog-tired 


68 The Island of Appledore 

and could have slept where we stood, but the 
wind was still up and it wasn’t easy going yet. 
It was my watch and I was dropping with 
sleepiness and weariness, but so I had been 
many times before and it was part of being a 
good sailor to be able to keep awake. I stood 
peering and peering into the dark, my eyes 
trying to go shut, but my whole will set to keep 
them open. All of a sudden, as I stood there 
looking, I saw a full-rigged ship dead ahead 
of us, every sail spread out to the wind, her 
bow-wave slanting sharp out on each side from 
her cut-water, her wake showing clear in a 
white line of foam. She was so near I could 
see the men moving on her decks, could see 
her open hatchways and the flag flying from 
her main truck. We were right in line to ram 
her amidships; it seemed we couldn’t miss her 
except by a miracle. I roared to the man at 
the wheel, “Port your helm, port your helm, 
put her hard over,” and the schooner came 
about with a rush that almost capsized her. 
The captain ran up on deck, the men turned 
out of their bunks and came swarming up from 
below, all wanting to know what the matter 
was. I told them about the ship and turned to 
point her out — but she wasn’t there! The 



“Why,” gasped Billy, “it must have been the Flying 

Dutchman 





The Island of Appledore 69 

clouds parted just then and the moon came out, 
just to show that the sea was empty for miles 
on every side, and that old Ned Saulsby had 
been sleeping on watch. Of course if I had 
thought two seconds I would have known that 
never a ship on earth would have all sail set 
in such a wind as that, but I had not stopped to 
think.” 

“Why,” gasped Billy, “it must have been the 
Flying Dutchman 

“Some of the men whispered around that 
it might have been just that ship, but the cap- 
tain knew better and so did I. It was only a 
dream and I had been asleep when I had no 
business to be, and if I had done it once I 
would do it again. If I had been young it 
would have been different, when lads aren’t 
used to standing watch such a thing may hap- 
pen and we know they’ll learn better, but when 
an old sailor does it he can be sure of just one 
thing: his days at sea are near their end. I 
left the Mary Jameson at the next port, before 
the captain could turn me off. I knocked 
about for nearly a year, trying one berth and 
then another, falling lower and lower, and 
knowing I was failing in my duty whatever I 
tried to do. So at last I came limping into 


70 The Island of Appledore 

the harbour of Appledore Island and I knew, 
when I stepped ashore, that I would never set 
sail again.” 

Captain Saulsby finished his story and 
shifted warily in his place. He glanced over 
his shoulder at the rising bank of clouds, but 
betrayed no surprise. 

“I knew by the feel of the wind that some 
such thing was coming,” he said calmly. “If 
somebody’s going to pick us up in time they’ll 
have to hurry a bit.” 

He made one or two efforts to talk further, 
but the pauses between his sentences became 
longer and longer. Billy suddenly realized 
that each had been trying to keep the other in- 
terested so that the ominous bank of clouds 
might go as long as possible unnoticed. He 
observed that the old sailor seemed very weary, 
that more than once his hands slipped from 
their hold and had to take a fresh grip. He 
tried to whistle to keep up the spirits of both 
of them, but the tune sounded high and queer 
and cracked, and he gave it up. At last Cap- 
tain Saulsby broke silence suddenly. 

“No one seems to be finding us,” he said, 
“and we can’t hold on forever. There’s some- 
thing I must tell you, in case you should be 


The Island of Appledore 71 

able to last longer than I. That land of mine, 
you know, that Jarreth and the other fellow 
are trying to buy, well, they are not to have 
it. You will see to that, won’t you?” 

“You don’t want to part with it?” asked 
Billy, not quite understanding. 

“I don’t want him to have it,” the Captain 
repeated, “whether I — I get back to it or not. 
He doesn’t want it for a good purpose. I’ve 
suspected that always, though I have never 
been sure enough to make an open report. I 
was a coward, I suppose, and was afraid of 
being laughed at. People won’t believe there 
is a war within a thousand years of us, but 
I’m not taking any chances. There are no 
Germans going to settle down here, getting 
ready to help the Kaiser, the way they did for 
years across the water. They’ll find their time 
wasted on the Island of Appledore. It’s 
foggy a lot off this coast, the island is far out, 
there’s a sheltered, hidden harbour, there 
where the mill stream comes out; they couldn’t 
find a better place, they think, and so they’re 
trying to buy it. Smugglers and even pirates, 
they say, used to make it their landing place, 
but it’s worse rascals than either that want to 
use it now. Ned Saulsby has stood them off 


72 The Island of Appledore 

so far, but he may have to leave the work to 
some one else.” 

His voice shook with a sudden earnestness 
that was startling. 

“Promise me, Billy Wentworth,” he said, 
“promise me that if you’re the only one that 
comes to shore after this cruise, you’ll see that 
land is safe whatever happens.” 

“I promise,” Billy assured him, trembling 
with excitement at the rush of new, strange 
ideas that suddenly came tumbling into his 
mind; “but, Captain Saulsby, of course we’re 
— we’re going to come ashore together.” 

“You can’t always tell, boy,” the other an- 
swered, his very voice showing the weakness 
that was gradually overcoming his iron deter- 
mination. “I’m not so young as sailormen 
sometimes are, and — even — the — young — ones 
— don’t — always — hold — on — forever.” 

He collapsed sideways even as he spoke and 
would have pitched into the water had not 
Billy caught him. The wrench almost de- 
stroyed his own balance, but he managed some- 
how to cling to the centre-board and keep them 
both still upon the overturned boat. 

It grew darker and darker, and the wide 
stretch of sea turned from blue to shadowy 


The Island of Appledore 73 

grey as the twilight fell. Billy and the Cap- 
tain talked no more, for every last ounce of 
strength was being put into the effort of cling- 
ing to the boat. The seas rose higher and 
snatched at them as they hung against the side, 
more than once it seemed that their hold must 
be torn loose. It became plain to the boy, as 
he clung determinedly, with one arm around 
the old man and one flung over the ridge of the 
keel, that the boat was growing heavier and 
more water-logged with every wave to which 
she rose, that their one support was slowly 
settling beneath them. 

Captain Saulsby muttered something in his 
ear, but it was a moment before he could quite 
understand the half-whispered words. 

“She’s an old craft, and I’m her captain,” 
he said, “it’s the right way for a boat and her 
old skipper to go down. But you’re young; 
it’s a shame for you, Billy. You would have 
made a good sailor; that’s the best I can say 
for any man.” 

He did not speak again, nor even try to 
move, he seemed to have lapsed practically 
into unconsciousness. Billy still clung to him 
and to the boat while his arms ached, then 
pricked and burned and finally became numb. 


74 The Island of Appledore 

He felt so utterly exhausted that he thought 
he must give up, must drift off into quiet sleep 
and put an end to such hopeless effort. To 
rouse himself he began counting the stars over- 
head, the navigation stars whose names Cap- 
tain Saulsby had taught him. There was 
Polaris, and there was Vega nearly overhead, 
and Altair, and there was Arcturus dipping 
toward the western horizon. While he 
watched, the orange gold of Arcturus was ob- 
scured by the rising clouds, then Altair was 
blotted out, now Vega, now the North Star 
and the shining Dipper. The boat began to 
plunge and roll, she could not last much longer 
now. He was too weary to care much 
whether she did or not. 

He, too, must have fallen into unconscious- 
ness for there was certainly an interval of 
which he knew nothing. Then a cold dash of 
water slapped in his face and roused him. He 
saw, almost above him, a black silhouette 
against the grey sky, the outline of a torpedo- 
boat making directly for them. 

He felt only a lukewarm interest in the sud- 
den vision, and wondered vaguely, 

“Do they see us, or are they going to run us 
down?” 


CHAPTER V 

THE WAR GAME 

To Billy it seemed as though he fell asleep 
very quietly and comfortably, as he clung to 
the cat-boat with the water breaking over him, 
and that he awoke, aching and miserable, to 
the wish that he had been left where he was. 
As more of his wits returned to him, however, 
he realized that it was a little pleasanter to 
be warm and dry and lying in a berth in a 
brightly-lighted room than left to drown in 
the disagreeably cold Atlantic. 

Some one was lifting him up to pour a hot 
stinging drink down his throat; he gulped and 
choked and did not enjoy it. He tried to look 
around to see who was treating him with such 
unkindness but found it too great an effort. 
Some one else was leaning over him. He 
realized after listening to the talk for a mo- 
ment that this was the ship’s captain. He re- 
membered quickly Captain Saulsby’s last in- 
75 


76 The Island of Appledore 

junction and, with a great exertion managed 
to speak. 

“That land on Appledore Island, 7 ’ he began 
unsteadily. “Captain Saulsby’s land — some 
one wants to buy it — some one who isn’t square 
— you must see about it.” 

He did not seem to be making himself very 
clear, and stopped to rest. 

“What’s the boy talking about?” the Captain 
said, clearly puzzled. “Is he out of his 
head?” 

“He sounds so but perhaps he isn’t,” the 
other answered; “he seems to be trying very 
hard to tell you something. Here, take this.” 

Billy swallowed a second dose of the detest- 
able drink and under its reviving influence 
made another attempt. This time he suc- 
ceeded better and seemed almost to make the 
Captain understand what he was trying to ex- 
plain. The endeavour wearied him greatly, 
however, and he lay back in his berth feeling 
quite worn out and very drowsy. 

“We’ll let him sleep a while now,” the 
officer said; “that, I think, is really all he 
needs. He’s a husky youngster and won’t suf- 
fer much from his ducking. I’m not so cer- 
tain about the old fellow who was with him.” 


The Island of Appledore 77 

Billy was asleep almost before they had 
reached the door. When he awoke again he 
certainly felt much better, though stiff and 
sore and uncomfortable still. A smiling col- 
ored boy in a white jacket was sitting by his 
berth, put there for the special purpose, it 
seemed, of catching him when he rolled over 
the edge, which he did immediately. 

The wind had risen and the torpedo-boat 
that had picked them up was pitching and 
tossing as only a torpedo-boat knows the art. 
Everything in the room danced and rattled 
and Billy was obliged to brace himself with 
both arms to keep from being thrown out of 
his berth again and again. He asked between 
pitches for Captain Saulsby and was assured 
that all was well with the old sailor and that he 
was “coming around fine.” 

Vigorous health is a strong resister even of 
the after effects of trying to drown, so it was 
not long before Billy was able to sit up, then 
to step gingerly down from his rocking berth 
and try a few unsteady steps across the floor. 
After that the room became rapidly too small 
to hold him and he was seized with a devour- 
ing curiosity to inspect the ship. He was 
taken first to see Captain Saulsby, who had 


78 The Island of Appledore 

been conscious and quite cheery, they told him, 
and had now dropped off into a comfortable 
sleep. A friendly blue-jacket who had also 
come to ask after the captain’s welfare, took 
Billy under his care, and offered to conduct 
him up on deck. Once there, however, the 
sailor was called away by a sudden order, leav- 
ing his charge clinging to the rail and won- 
dering just where they were going and what 
they were doing. Clouds of salt spray swept 
the length of the ship, making him duck and 
gasp and grin, but he would not have gone 
below again for anything on earth. 

The night was pitch black now and stormy, 
with gusts of wind and rain, the ship seemed 
to be taking an aimless course, running gen- 
erally southward from Appledore Island but 
moving now here, now there, sometimes at 
half speed, sometimes as swiftly as her big 
engines could drive her. Presently his new 
friend was able to return to his side and to ex- 
plain a little more of what they were about. 

“We’re playing the war game,” he said, 
“and our orders just now are to look for sub- 
marines. The only sign of one we have found 
so far was your little craft, and a pretty model 
of a submarine she was trying to make of her- 


The Island of Appledore 79 

self. There’s one of the big battleships has 
got away from the rest of the fleet, and we 
have orders to look for her, too; but there’s 
not much likelihood of her being in these 
parts. We’ll sink her if we can get the 
chance though; I wish we could.” 

“But — but — you don’t really oink her?” 
Billy asked, not willing to show his ignorance, 
but far too curious to keep quiet. 

“Oh, no ; we get up as close as we dare and 
send up a signal to show that we could sink 
her and that it is to be counted on the record 
for us. But if she finds us with her search- 
lights before we can fire, and if we’re close 
enough to be smashed by her guns, then we are 
destroyed and a mad lot we are, I can tell 
you.” 

It might have sounded like a foolish pas- 
time to Billy when he was ashore, but here in 
the wind and the dark, with the ship rushing 
forward at full speed and with every one 
aboard her straining to do his part to the utter- 
most, the war game seemed most thrillingly in 
earnest. He too hung over the rail and 
watched the long beam of light swing in 
searching circles, he peered through the dark 
for the periscope of a submarine until his eyes 


80 The Island of Appledore 

ached and was as disappointed as anybody 
when no such discovery was made. Time 
passed and nothing was to be seen but a waste 
of angry, tossing water; so the lights were 
finally covered and the destroyer turned to 
pursue a steady course northward. 

Billy never quite knew by just what process 
he came finally to be on the bridge. He was 
aware that it was absolutely against all rules 
for him to go there, but such a force of curios- 
ity drew him thither that it did not seem pos- 
sible to resist. By slipping silently from one 
inconspicuous place to another, by lounging 
carelessly against the rail whenever an officer 
chanced to pass and by speeding across the 
deck the moment his back was turned, he 
finally came closer and closer to the desired 
spot, ventured a cautious foot upon, one of the 
steps and then another, and all at once was 
safely curled up in a corner of dense shadow 
within the sacred limits of the forbidden place. 

The Captain was walking slowly up and 
down, talking to one of the officers, passing 
every now and then so close that he almost 
brushed Billy’s elbow. In the gleam of one 
of the hooded lights, he could sometimes catch 
the glistening of the water on their wet 


The Island of Appledore 81 

coats, or the shine of the younger officer’s 
bright red hair. 

“That’s a queer pair we picked up,” the 
Captain was saying as they passed. “I went 
down to see how they were getting on and 
found the boy all worked up about some 
scheme that he claims is being hatched on 
Appledore Island. He says that the old sailor 
wants it reported, and may be too far gone to 
do it himself, but he isn’t very clear as to just 
what the trouble is. The best I can make out 
seems to be that there is an effort being made 
to buy this man Saulsby’s land, and that he is 
sure there is German influence backing it, 
with a view to getting ready a possible base of 
supplies in case of war.” 

“One hears of such things having gone on 
for years abroad, before the German trouble 
cut loose,” said the other, “but the boy may not 
have known what he was talking about. He 
had been hanging to that boat four or five 
hours and that doesn’t tend to clear the brain.” 

“Well,” said the Captain, “I’m not very sure 
myself, but I may plan to look into the matter 
without telling him so. The harbour he 
speaks of is at the northwest end — ” 

They moved out of hearing, and Billy took 


82 The Island of Appledore 

the opportunity to stretch his cramped knees 
and shift his uneasy position before they 
should come back again. He was heartily 
ashamed of being there, eavesdropping but— 
well, one does not get into the war game often. 
When he was passed again, he realized from 
the voices that the Captain had gone below 
and that two of the younger officers were talk- 
ing. 

“I wish we could have found some of those 
submarines,” one was saying, “especially with 
the manoevres so nearly over. Our orders to 
end by fetching a compass round the whole 
fleet make it almost certain that we will be 
caught ourselves, so it does seem as though we 
might have got something.” 

“Yes,” said the other. “I believe if I could 
only fire off that torpedo rocket to tell one of 
those uppety submarine commanders he is 
sunk, I would be the happiest man in Uncle 
Sam’s Navy. There’s no hope now of our 
finding that battleship either.” 

The destroyer sped on through the rain and 
the dark, the two officers stood silently at their 
posts and Billy curled up closer in his corner, 
soaked and cramped and aching and happy. 
He thought a moment of that boy who had 


The Island of Appledore 83 

walked up the path between Captain Saulsby’s 
bent, old willow trees, a sullen boy who had 
sniffed the salt breeze disdainfully and vowed 
that he did not like it. That was some en- 
tirely different person whose name might have 
happened to be Billy Wentworth, but who had 
nothing whatever in common with the boy he 
was now. He closed his eyes as he was think- 
ing it over, and even might have dozed a little 
until a sudden exclamation from the nearest 
officer startled him into alert attention. The 
rapid volley of excited orders that followed 
told him at once that something unusual must 
have occurred, and, forgetting all caution in 
his eager interest, he stood upright that he 
might watch the better. It seemed as though 
he saw a looming bulk in the blackness ahead 
of them, as though he actually heard a voice 
speaking somewhere beyond there in the dark. 
Then, all in a breath, a myriad of electric 
lights went on and there sprang into form the 
outline of a huge battleship, right across their 
bows. She seemed to tower above them like 
a mountain, enormous, massive, moving at no 
very great speed, but inexorably as though 
there were no hope of her swerving or check- 
ing her course. 


84 The Island of Appledore 

The little destroyer ducked and plunged as 
she came hard over, she caught the big bow 
wave and floundered for a second but never- 
theless pressed manfully on. They were cut- 
ting under the big dreadnaught’s bows, they 
were bound to be rammed amidships at least; 
no, it would be nearer the stern. Oh, wonder 
of wonders, they were going to win clear. It 
seemed to Billy, as he clung to the rail, that he 
could almost have stretched out his hand and 
touched the vessel’s vast steel side as they went 
by. He heard some one near him laugh out 
loud in pure, joyful excitement and he saw 
that it was the commander of the destroyer, 
himself, who seized the pistol and fired the 
signal rocket. Up it went in a flaming 
stream, directly over the dreadnaught’s 
bridge, described a crimson arch above the 
heads of the startled officers and dropped on 
the other side. On both vessels there could 
be no shadow of a doubt that a desperate 
night attack had been successfully made and 
that according to all the rules of the war game 
the battleship New Mexico had gone to the 
bottom with all on board. 

For Billy, who was as full of thrills as any 
of the rest, who hung forward to watch with 


The Island of Appledore 85 

all his eyes lest he should miss something, there 
was a separate passage of the adventure that 
was all his own. For as the ship’s searchlights 
slanted down upon them a moment too late, 
cutting a wide, white circle upon the water, 
they showed him a most unexpected sight. 
There, bobbing serenely on the waves, her sails 
drooping and a little bedraggled as though she 
were very tired, but her gay red pennant flut- 
tering bravely still, rode the little craft that 
had been the cause of all his adventures. 
There could surely be no doubt that it was the 
Josephine . A moment she sailed serenely 
alongside, then the roar of foaming water from 
under the destroyer’s bow reached out and 
caught he,r. She staggered, careened, rose 
boldly on the summit of a wave, then sank. 
She had sailed far and carried calamity in her 
wake, but she made a brave end and went 
down with colours flying. 

His excitement in watching the Josephine 
was most rudely interrupted by the discovery 
by the young officer that there was some one on 
the bridge who had no business to be there. 
Just what was said to him, Billy preferred aft- 
erwards not to remember. He was bundled 
down the steps with far more haste than cere- 


86 The Island of Appledore 

mony, and presently found himself, much 
chastened and subdued, back in charge of his 
friend, the bluejacket. Even then he refused 
to be taken below, for the destroyer was now 
coming into the zone where she must make the 
perilous passage through the whole fleet, and 
he was bound that he would not lose one 
breathless instant. 

The wind had dropped a little and the sea 
was growing quieter. The torpedo-boat 
checked her speed and moved forward more 
slowly and almost without a sound. There 
was nothing, Billy thought, but a waste of 
empty water and starless sky, but wait, what 
was that darker shape showing vaguely 
through the gloom? Presently he was aware 
that it was a ship, and another one beyond, and 
another and another, vessels on every hand 
lying in wait, hostile and threatening. The 
destroyer crept onward, feeling her way, alter- 
ing her course every now and again to avoid 
some man-of-war swinging at anchor ahead 
of her. Far off on the horizon there shone out 
a twinkle of lights and the beam of a search- 
light was lifted to the sky. 

“The rest of the torpedo-boat flotilla is com- 
ing in, too,” said the sailor at his side, chuck- 


The Island of Appledore 87 

ling gleefully. “That fellow over there has 
been caught slipping by, but it wasn’t us.” 

Suddenly their vessel gathered speed and 
shot away with her engines crowded to every 
pound of steam. She had passed the danger 
lines and had only to put a safe distance be- 
tween herself and the battleship fleet. The 
watchers on the nearest vessel must have heard 
the hum of her machinery or the rush of water 
from her bow, for immediately lights flared 
up, seeming to spread from ship to ship, 
straight gleaming, groping fingers flashed back 
and forth, signalling, hunting and ques- 
tioning. Billy, looking back, seemed to see 
the whole sky an interwoven maze of shafts of 
light as every warship searched for her enemy. 
One long beam swung toward them in a wide, 
sweeping curve, approached, almost touched 
them, but just missed, leaving them safe to 
speed away into the safety of the darkness. 

“It’s twelve o’clock, and the war game’s 
over,” said the sailor at his side, “and I believe 
our old boat has made a pretty good record 
after all. Now you’re to come below and 
turn in, young man, or you’ll surely be a dead 
boy in the morning.” 

The novelty of sleeping in a sailor’s ham- 


88 The Island of Appledore 

mock was quite lost on Billy, for he was deep 
in slumber almost before he could clamber in. 
He was nevertheless uneasily conscious, even 
through the heaviest of his repose, of the 
swinging and bumping that attended his slum- 
bers. He thought he must be still dreaming 
when some one shook him by the arm. 

“It’s a shame to waken such a sleepy boy,” 
said his friend, the blue-jacket, “but there’s 
something here you don’t want to miss seeing.” 

Billy would have been willing to miss any- 
thing, he thought, until he had stumbled out 
of his hammock, rubbed the sleep from his 
eyes and looked where his companion pointed. 

It was morning, cold, cloudy, windless 
morning, but still with light enough to see. 
One by one the ships were leaving their 
anchorage and moving away in long proces- 
sion, huge dreadnaughts, swift cruisers, tor- 
pedo boats and submarines. In endless line 
they seemed to pass, stately and grey and silent 
in the dawn. Billy, his teeth chattering with 
chill and excitement, his bones still aching 
from the misadventures of the past hours, 
clung to his friend’s arm and looked and 
looked as though he could not see enough. 

Never before had he had an idea of what 


The Island of Appledore 89 

the Navy really was. He had seen photo- 
graphs upon a printed page, or pictures on the 
movie screen, but had never even guessed from 
them how a man-of-war would impress him in 
reality. For the big grey battleships sud- 
denly seemed to stand for many things, for the 
greatness of the country they guarded, for the 
power of the engines that drove them, the 
faithfulness and loyalty of the service that 
guided them and lastly — here an extra quiver 
ran through his shivering body — for the might 
of the enemy they would some day go forth to 
meet. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE EBBING OF THE TIDE 

SINCE the destroyer had other orders, Billy 
and Captain Saulsby were transferred to a ship 
that was to put in toward Appledore Island 
and pick up the two officers who had been left 
there for shore observations. Billy observed 
the captains of the two vessels talking very 
earnestly together, and that afterwards they 
strolled down the deck to have what seemed a 
casual chat with Captain Saulsby. He, him- 
self, however, was too busy seeing and hearing 
new things to pay much attention to what was 
going forward. He was taken down to see the 
ship’s engines, and stood gazing at them in 
dumb awe, feeling much as though he were 
an ant staring at the shining mechanism of a 
repeater watch. 

They went ashore, finally, in the ship’s mo- 
tor launch and were landed in the little har- 
bour below the old mill. Billy had thought 
that the place had been chosen as the best spot 

90 


The Island of Appledore 91 

to leave Captain Saulsby, since it was nearest 
his house; he was somewhat surprised, there- 
fore, to see two of the bluejackets disembark 
with them, and send the launch back to the 
ship. 

“We were to meet the two officers here,” one 
of them explained, “and I had written orders 
to give them from the Captain. We saw them 
signal from here that they would be waiting : 
I can’t understand why we don’t find them. I 
will just have to go around to the hotel with 
the orders, I suppose, and see if I can find 
them there.” 

“Come with us, then,” said Billy, “and I 
will show you the short way. It is only a few 
minutes’ walk to Captain Saulsby’s, and won’t 
take you any time to go on to the hotel.” 

He proved to be wrong, however, in more 
than one particular. It was a good half hour 
before they were able to get Captain Saulsby 
even the short distance down to the edge of the 
mill-stream. Although protesting loudly that 
he had suffered no harm from yesterday’s mis- 
hap and that such an adventure was nothing to 
an old sailor like himself, the Captain was, 
nevertheless, unable to hide the fact that he 
was thoroughly spent and ill. Even with a 


92 The Island of Appledore 

strong arm to help him on each side, he was 
hardly able to struggle along the path. His 
protests that there was nothing wrong, nothing 
wrong at all, became ever louder and more in- 
coherent until it was plain to all three of his 
companions that he was rapidly growing light- 
headed. 

When they came to the causeway, moreover, 
they discovered a fact that Billy, in his ig- 
norance of the ocean’s ways, had failed to 
count upon. The tide was at the wrong stage, 
and the water too deep over the stepping stones 
to permit of a safe passage across. 

“What a nuisance,” exclaimed Billy, ut- 
terly exasperated both with the forces of na- 
ture and with himself, “how could I have been 
so stupid as to forget!” 

“If we only hadn’t sent the launch back!” 
remarked the sailor. “But our orders were 
she was not to wait at all. I don’t understand 
myself what the whole thing is about, but I 
suppose the captain does.” 

“We’ll have to go around by the road,” the 
other said, “but there’s one thing sure, the old 
man can’t make it that far.” 

It was very plain that Captain Saulsby had 
dragged himself as far as he could, for he 


The Island of Appledore 93 

stood swaying and would have fallen. Be- 
tween them the two sturdy bluejackets carried 
him up the beach and laid him down under a 
tree. He seemed to be only vaguely conscious 
of where he was, and lay there muttering and 
talking to himself. 

“It was the feel of the blue water under me 
that kept me going,” he explained pathetically 
in a moment of being more himself ; “once I 
get on land you find out what I am, a battered 
old derelict good for nothing but to make trou- 
ble.” 

“Is there somewhere near where we can 
leave him?” one of the sailors asked. “It 
looks as though it might rain and he ought to 
be under cover. We can send you back some 
one to drive him home, but we had better not 
wait now; our orders were to hurry. Isn’t 
there a house near?” 

“There’s the old mill,” Billy recollected 
suddenly; “that will keep us dry at least and 
we can wait there for some one to come for 
us. I don’t think it is too far to carry him.” 

Only the iron muscles trained in Uncle 
Sam’s navy could have managed such a huge, 
awkward burden as Captain Saulsby proved 
to be. He objected loudly and even struggled 


94 The Island of Appledore 

against being carried, so that all three of his 
friends were well worn out by the time they 
had deposited him in the big, cool, shadowy 
room that formed the first story of the mill. 
Billy went out on the steps to thank the men 
and to give them directions as to how to find 
the hotel. 

“You follow the wood road until you come 
to the main highway,” he told them, “and then 
go straight down that until you come to the 
bridge. It’s pretty far, but you can’t lose the 
way.” 

“We’ll make time by walking,” returned 
the sailor; “the water won’t be down off that 
causeway until after two and it would be no 
good trying to cross it with such a tide run- 
ning. We’ll be sure to send you help.” 

“There’s a better way than that,” exclaimed 
Billy; “I can go up the lane to the Shutes’ and 
get them to help me. That will be quicker 
than waiting for you to send some one. I 
should have thought of that before.” 

The two men walked off down the sun- 
flecked road, and Billy stood for a minute 
watching them go. It was a warm and pleas- 
ant day, with birds singing, and big white 
clouds blowing across such patches of sky as 


The Island of Appledore 95 

he could see above the trees. It was nearly 
noon; everything was very still and peace- 
ful ; there might be a little threat of rain in 
some of those bigger clouds, but certainly 
nothing more than a passing shower. Why 
should he have such a feeling of vague un- 
easiness, of danger; a queer unrest as though 
he must get ready for something that was 
about to happen? Why should he feel such 
regret that the two men were getting farther 
and farther away? Why must he try hard to 
stifle the impulse to run after and call them 
back? He did not know. 

He turned at last and went into the mill, 
and over to where the sailors had laid the old 
captain down. He remembered that wide 
bench under the little window; he and Sally 
had sat upon it, but certainly he did not recol- 
lect that it had been covered with a blanket. 
There were some papers lying on the dusty 
table too; he might have not seen them, but 
a puff of wind came through the broken win- 
dowpane and scattered them across the floor. 
He gathered them up, but found that nearly 
all were blank; only the three uppermost ones 
had any lines of writing. They were penned 
in an odd hand, very small and with innumer- 


96 The Island of Appledore 

able curves and flourishes ; the words, even the 
letters belonged to a foreign language. Billy 
felt that he ought to recognize it, but in the 
half-light of the big room could not make it 
out. The dust was thick upon the pages, so 
they must have been there some time; most 
probably he had merely failed to notice them 
when he had been there before. 

Captain Saulsby was less restless now than 
he had been, and seemed to be growing quieter 
and more contented, even drowsy. Billy 
thought that he had better wait a little before 
he set out for the Shutes’, that it would be 
better to let the old man fall asleep so that he 
might not know he was being left alone. He 
sat down upon the floor to wait until the Cap- 
tain should drop off. 

It did not seem at all unpleasant to be rest- 
ing a little for, oh, Heavens, how tired he was! 
He was still sore and aching from his hours in 
the water ; he had not slept so very long during 
the night; the very excitement and novelty 
that had kept him up so far, had worn him 
out and made his present exhaustion more 
complete. He thought it would do no harm 
if he just lay down, with his coat rolled up 
for a pillow, perhaps it might make the cap- 


The Island of Appledore 97 

tain feel more like going to sleep. He was 
not going to shut his eyes; oh, no; he was just 
going to take the time at last to think over all 
the things that had happened in twenty-four 
hours. Only think, yesterday at this time he 
and Captain Saulsby had sat at the door put- 
ting the finishing touches to the Josephine . 
No, it could not have been yesterday; it must 
have been last week. A wasp was buzzing 
in the window ; it seemed very loud, but finally 
became fainter as though it were moving away 
— very — far — away. 

A dead boy could not have slept more heav- 
ily than did Billy on the hard floor of the old 
mill. The wind rose and rain struck, patter- 
ing, against the windows, a door closed some- 
where, perhaps not merely by the force of 
the wind. Captain Saulsby stirred in his 
sleep and groaned out loud, but still the weary 
boy slept on. The far-off rumble of some 
warship at target practice came faintly on the 
wind — it had no power to waken him. It was 
not until hours had gone by, not until one 
shower had passed and then another, and even 
the second one had cleared away; not until 
the boisterous wind had caught one of the 
heavy shutters and slammed it to with a crash, 


98 The Island of Appledore 

that Billy sat up with a start and rubbed his 
eyes. 

The sun-light had been showing in a sharp 
bar across the sill of the eastern window when 
he fell asleep; it was slanting almost level 
through the western one when he awoke. The 
shadows on the floor were long and black, the 
whole place was beginning to be grey and dim. 
He could not believe that he had slept so 
long, but everything about him gave un- 
doubted proof. He ran out and down the 
path to the edge of the creek, and saw, alas, 
just what he had feared. While he had been 
sleeping, the precious moment had passed, the 
tide had gone out and come in again, the 
causeway was covered and would offer no 
chance of safe passage until morning. 

“Oh, how could I, how could I?” he kept 
saying over and over to himself, although it 
was easy enough to see how he could. After 
his long sleep upon the hard floor every inch 
of him seemed to have its separate pain; he 
felt as though each move must make him cry 
aloud. He could hardly make his way back 
up the path to the mill, but make it he must 
for there was now much to be done, and in 
haste. 


The Island of Appledore 99 

Captain Saulsby was still asleep when he 
came back, a most alarming sleep, he thought, 
never having seen such a dead, heavy stupor 
before. Wrong as it seemed to leave the old 
man alone, it seemed worse to wait longer 
without doing anything, so Billy decided to 
set off for the Shutes’ at once. Sally’s father 
or mother would certainly come back with 
him and would arrange for some way of tak- 
ing the Captain to his own house. He put 
on his coat and went out hurriedly. He was 
glad to get out into the last of the sunshine; 
he somehow did not like the feeling of that 
place inside. 

The way to Sally Shute’s had seemed pleas- 
ant enough the day he had walked it with her 
two weeks ago. But now it was quite dif- 
ferent; the tall pine-trunks looked stiff and 
forbidding, the slender white Indian pipes, 
pale and ghostly in the dense shadows. Very 
little sunshine filtered down through the 
heavy branches, and presently even that was 
gone. He walked quickly; then, he hardly 
knew why, began to run. 

It was a most breathless, tired boy that ar- 
rived finally at the end of the lane and ran 
across the Shutes’ garden. He stepped on 


ioo The Island of Appledore 

some of Mrs. Shiite’s precious purple gerani- 
ums but he could not stop to go around them. 
The house had a silent, shut-up air that made 
his heart go down the moment he looked at 
it. Suppose they were all away; suppose 
there was no help to be had! He jangled 
loudly at the big bell, then, almost before it 
had stopped vibrating, jangled loudly and im- 
patiently again. There was absolute silence 
inside at first; then, oh, what a relief; foot- 
steps could be heard coming down the stairs, 
along the hall; there was an irritating pause 
as some one fumbled at the lock. The door 
opened and Billy made no attempt to restrain 
a shout of delight, for there stood Sally. 

Sally Shute with her round cheeks and her 
fat yellow braids and her pink gingham dress 
looked a very real and wholesome person after 
all the half-seen terrors and half-felt dangers 
that had seemed to be around him. Still 
standing on the doorstep he began hastily to 
tell her all about what had happened and had 
got nearly half-way through his tale before 
she interrupted him. 

“Come in,” she ordered, “and begin again 
and tell me that all over. I have not under- 


The Island of Appledore ioi 

stood one word of what you are talking 
about.” 

She took him out into the kitchen, such a 
warm, bright, cheerful place that he felt his 
spirits reviving at once. 

“Sit down there,” she said, pointing to the 
red-covered table, “and now tell me how long 
it is since you had anything to eat.” 

Billy had breakfasted on the ship, but that 
had been exceedingly early, and he had eaten 
nothing since. That, he thought, must be 
part of what made him feel so queer. Sally 
flatly refused to let him talk any more until 
he had begun his supper. 

“You can tell me about it while you are eat- 
ing, even if you have to speak with your mouth 
full,” she said. “It seems as though Captain 
Saulsby was sick and you want me to go some- 
where with you, so I’ll have to be getting 
things together anyway. There won’t be any 
time wasted.” 

“Aren’t your father and mother here?” 
asked Billy anxiously. 

“No; they took Jacky and went over to the 
mainland on the afternoon boat, and won’t be 
back tonight. There’s no one here but my 


102 The Island of Appledore 

grandmother, and she is lame and deaf, so she 
can’t go with us. Don’t worry though; I’ll 
know what to do.” 

It was queer about Sally, how calm she al- 
ways was. Perhaps she had less imagination 
than other children and so was not apt to be 
aroused by the thought of dangerous possi- 
bilities. The thing directly before her was 
always the one thing that Sally saw, saw it 
clearly and fully and knew just what she was 
going to do about it. 

By the time Billy had finished eating, she 
was not only in full possession of his story, but 
had put on her coat, had got ready a large 
bundle and a basket and had explained as 
much of the situation to -her grandmother as 
spasmodic shouting could accomplish. 

“Eh, eh,” said the old lady, “I under- 
stand,” although it was very doubtful if she 
did. 

They set out together down the lane, Billy 
feeling much cheered now that he had some 
notion of what they were to do. Capable 
Sally’s experience evidently included just 
such a situation as this, for people had been 
ship-wrecked before off Appledore Island, 
and she had helped to care for them after- 


The Island of Appledore 103 

ward. She chattered gaily as she trotted by 
his side, and made many matter-of-fact com- 
ments on the adventures through which he had 
passed. 

“I thought your clothes looked as though 
you had been doing something dreadful to 
them,” she said; “I am afraid they will never 
be good for anything again.” 

Billy did cut rather a sorry figure for he 
had been wet and dried and wet and dried 
again, before his long nap on the dusty floor. 
He thought little of that, however, but hur- 
ried Sally forward through the gathering twi- 
light until they reached the old mill. 

It was almost completely dark inside, and 
felt damp and chilly. Sally had had the fore- 
thought to bring candles and matches and, un- 
der her instructions, Billy soon had a fire 
burning in the old fireplace. She bent over 
Captain Saulsby, who was still lying in the 
same deep-breathing stupor, and frowned and 
shook her head. 

“He’s too old for such adventures,” was her 
comment. “I don’t like it.” 

They heated some water at the fire and 
mixed a hot drink for the old man which he 
roused himself enough to swallow. They 


104 The Island of Appledore 

covered him with warm blankets and rubbed 
at his cold hands. 

“Now try to lift him up a little,” she or- 
dered, “while I get this pillow under his head. 
That is right, now — Billy, what is that?” 

For the absolute silence of the empty mill 
had been broken by a sound. Above their 
heads was heard the creak of a board, then 
the muffled noise of a quiet footfall and the 
scraping of rusty hinges as a door was stealth- 
ily opened. 


CHAPTER VII 


MIST AND MOONLIGHT 

The two stood looking at each other for a 
full minute, both as still as mice. 

“Did you hear it?” Sally asked at last in a 
startled whisper, and, “I did, didn’t you?” 
Billy returned. 

They listened and listened but there was no 
repetition of the sound upstairs. It might 
have been a mistake, it might have been — oh, 
anything. The silence was so complete that 
Billy could hear the blood throbbing in his 
ears and the faint squeak of a board under 
Sally’s foot as she shifted her position. A lit- 
tle bright-eyed mouse peeped out of a corner 
and, deceived by the quiet, thought the way 
was safe for an excursion across the wide, dusty 
floor. It was quite in the centre of the room 
before it discovered that it was in the dreaded 
presence of human beings, turned, and went 
scampering back to its hole again. Quite in 
105 


106 The Island of Appledore 

accord with her usual calm, Sally stared after 
it and minded its presence not at all. In fact 
she drew a comforting explanation from the 
intrusion. 

“I believe it was just rats or mice upstairs,” 
she said; “the noise they make often does 
sound like people moving about. I don’t 
really believe it was anything at all.” 

Billy looked up at the long flight of rick- 
ety stairs that led from the room they were in 
to the closed door on the floor above. Could 
any one be up there, was it that door that had 
moved a little on its rusty hinges, was some 
one peering at them even now? He could not 
be sure and, if the truth be told, he had no very 
great desire to go up and find out. He 
thought, after all, that Sally’s explanation was 
the most comfortable one to believe. 

There was not very much chance to think 
further of the matter just then for Captain 
Saulsby began to occupy all their attention. 
He roused himself from the strange stupor 
into which he had fallen, and seemed for a 
time to be really better. Sally even per- 
suaded him to drink some of the broth that 
she had brought with her, and had heated be- 
fore the fire. After he had swallowed it 


The Island of Appledore 107 

down, with some reluctance and by dint of 
much persuading, the old sailor sat up and 
seemed lively and talkative and almost him- 
self again. 

The two did not tell him of the sound they 
had heard upstairs, but let him talk of their 
adventure in the cat-boat, of the destroyer, of 
the ungrateful behaviour of the runaway 
Josephine . Occasionally his thoughts would 
wander a little and he would begin telling of 
some adventure long past; he went back more 
than once to the night when he had fallen 
asleep on watch and thought that he had seen 
a ship. He would bring himself back with 
a jerk and look at *hem wonderingly as though 
he did not quite understand, himself, how his 
ideas had become confused. Sally made him 
comfortable by moving the bench into a cor- 
ner by the fire, whose warmth felt pleasant 
enough, even to the children, since the air in 
the old, closed-up mill seemed to grow even 
more damp and chilly as the night advanced. 
Billy pulled out the broken arm-chair for 
Sally, and she sat down in it gratefully, for she 
was weary with much trotting back and forth. 
She answered Captain Saulsby now and again 
when he paused in his rambling talk, but 


108 The Island of Appledore 

finally began to speak only at longer and 
longer intervals. Billy sat opposite on the 
uncomfortable stool; he propped his head 
against the chimney piece for a little rest; he 
did not feel sleepy, but he too was very tired. 
He watched Sally’s yellow head nod once or 
twice, he saw her eyelids grow heavier and 
heavier until at last they closed. She leaned 
sideways against the arm of the chair, heaved 
a long drowsy sigh and fell fast asleep. 

Captain Saulsby did not seem in the least 
sleepy, but talked on and on, the thread of his 
conversation becoming ever more difficult to 
follow. His mind had dropped away entirely 
into the past; he talked of Singapore now, and 
of hot still nights on the Indian ocean, or of the 
restless, choppy tossing of the China Sea. 
Billy’s own thoughts wandered farther and 
farther away, pondering on questions of his 
own, the sound of the Captain’s voice becom- 
ing vague in his ears. He wondered dimly 
why the bluejackets had not come back; per- 
haps they had been picked up at the other 
landing place and had returned to the ship. 
He had assured them so earnestly that he could 
get assistance at Sally’s house that probably 
they had not thought of him again. When he 


The Island of Appledore 109 

found that the Shutes were away maybe he 
ought to have gone off at once by the road to 
get help. But no, that would have left Sally 
there alone for too long; it would not have 
been safe, especially with that possibility of 
something or somebody upstairs. Why, oh, 
why, had he slept through the ebb tide? That 
was what had caused all the trouble. His 
mind drifted further, to his mother and father 
in South America, and how much he would 
have to tell them when they got home. It 
would be more interesting to relate his tale to 
them than to Aunt Mattie, although she was 
proving to be rather a good sort, too. He 
liked Aunt Mattie; he would not have called 
her “an old-maid aunt” again for anything. 
How lucky it was she had gone to Boston and 
was not aware of any of his adventures. He 
watched the faint moonlight move across the 
floor, disappear and come into view again ; he 
thought of Johann Happs and his broken 
clock, and wondered again about the man who 
had frightened him so. Dear, dear, but this 
was a long night; would it ever end? He 
rose at last, walked stiffly over to mend the 
dying fire and then, going to the door, stood 
for a little peering out. 


iio The Island of Appledore 

A heavy fog was rolling in from the sea, 
but it seemed to cling to the ground and not 
to be able to rise very high. The trees and 
bushes stood knee deep in the thick white mist, 
with the moonlight still turning the topmost 
branches to silver. He felt sure that some 
hours must have gone by, that it must be after 
midnight, perhaps nearly morning. A light 
touch on his arm told him that Sally was 
awake and had come to stand beside him. 

“I am so stiff,” he whispered softly, “that 
I will have to go out and walk up and down 
a little or I will never be able to move again.” 

Sally nodded. 

“It will do you good,” she answered, also 
in a whisper, “and the Captain is quiet now.” 

Billy glanced toward the old sailor and 
somehow felt more alarmed about him than 
ever before. He was silent, but not asleep; 
his eyes were half-closed and he seemed quite 
unconscious of their presence. His breathing 
had grown weak and uneven. Sally went 
over to him ; if she felt the same anxiety that 
Billy did, she managed not to show it. 

“Go on,” she ordered, under her breath; “it 
will be good for you.” 

He wondered if perhaps the tide were not 


The Island of Appledore iii 

down now and the water shallow enough for 
him to cross the stepping stones. Once be- 
yond the mill creek he could get help so 
quickly that perhaps his two companions 
might not even know that he had gone. 

To spend such a night as he had, to follow 
it by sleeping all afternoon on a bare floor, 
and then sit up on a three-legged stool for half 
the next night, seemed to make one feel a little 
queer. He tramped down the path briskly 
to get the stiffness out of his legs, then turned 
to look back at the mill to make sure Sally 
was safe. There was a feeble, flickering light 
in the lower windows, that was from their fire, 
and the candle that burned on the mantel shelf. 
But — 

“Is that moonlight?” wondered Billy, as he 
caught a faint glimmer from one of the panes 
in a window above. 

It might have been moonlight reflected on 
the glass but he could not be sure. He went 
back to make certain but could not for the life 
of him decide. There were outside stairs, so 
steep as to be practically a ladder, that went 
up to the top of the mill. The steps led very 
close past the window at which he was look- 
ing and at which he continued to stare for 


1 1 2 The Island of Appledore 

some minutes while he made up his mind to 
something. 

“After all,” he concluded at last, almost 
speaking his thought aloud, “there is not the 
least harm in going up to see.” 

He stepped upon the stairs as quietly as a 
cat, so that Sally and the Captain need not be 
disturbed. The main door to the mill faced 
the sea, and this he had left open. The steps 
slanted across the wide, blank wall and passed 
close below the largest window that also gave 
upon the sea. As Billy climbed higher and 
higher he realized what a good lookout the 
place would make. 

The stairs outside were even more unsteady 
and decayed than was the staircase within, yet 
they held under his weight. Billy trod gin- 
gerly but progressed steadily upward in as 
complete silence as he could manage. Once 
or twice a rotten board creaked under his foot, 
but only faintly. He came nearer and nearer 
to the window and finally laid his hand upon 
the sill. He discovered that the sash was 
pushed half way up and propped with a stick. 
There was not the slightest glimmer of light 
inside. 

“Now,” he thought, “if the window was up, 


The Island of Appledore 113 

could the glass above have reflected the moon- 
light?” 

It was a difficult problem to decide, but at 
last he made up his mind that it could. He 
listened a long, long time but he did not hear 
a sound within, not a rustle, not a breath. It 
was so dark that even after his eyes got used 
to the blackness, and after he had lifted him- 
self up to peer boldly over the sill, he could 
spy nothing but vague bulky shapes like boxes 
or furniture. 

“There is surely no one there,” he decided; 
“there isn’t a person in the world who knows 
how to keep so still as that. There hasn’t been 
any one there for twenty years.” 

He let himself down from the sill with far 
less care than he had exercised in pulling him- 
self up. One of his hands slipped a little, 
and he shifted it quickly along the ledge to 
get a better hold. As he did so his fingers 
touched something that lay upon the sill; it 
dropped, struck one of the steps below him 
and bounded to one side, then fell with 
a thud upon the grass beneath. He ran down 
the ladder quickly and felt about on the 
ground until he found it. A pair of field 
glasses it proved to be, quite undoubtedly the 


1 14 The Island of Appledore 

same ones that he had picked up once before 
upon the rocks by the willow-trees. 

“No one there for twenty years?” he re- 
peated to himself. His fingers, slipping over 
the cool metal and the leather covering, as- 
sured him that the glasses were not even dusty. 

He had to sit down upon the grass, in order 
to reflect upon this problem long and earnestly. 

“There has been some one there lately,” he 
thought, “but there can’t be any one now; 
there can't . Nothing alive could possibly 
keep so quiet; why, I could have heard even 
a mouse breathe.” 

He was thoroughly convinced that his in- 
tent listening could not have played him false 
and that he must have been mistaken about 
seeing a light. His reassured thoughts, 
therefore, went back once more to Sally and 
Captain Saulsby. Suppose it was so near 
morning that the tide would be down again ; 
suppose he ran across the causeway for help 
and got back within half-an-hour, long before 
Sally could get uneasy. That surely was the 
best thing to do. The truth was that the old 
sailor’s condition had filled him with real 
terror. The creaking upstairs, the field- 
glasses, the suspicion of a light, all these might 


The Island of Appledore 115 

puzzle him, but the state of the Captain made 
him actually afraid. He felt that whatever 
was to be done must be accomplished at once. 

He ran down to the shore, along the rough, 
over-grown path. It was only a few yards to 
the beach, but a little longer around the shore 
to the stream and the place where the stepping 
stones crossed. He could see by the mist- 
obscured moonlight that the tide had come in 
and was going out again and that the water 
was still running over the causeway. 

“It can’t be so very deep,” he thought, and 
taking off his coat and hanging his shoes about 
his neck, he waded cautiously into the stream. 
Up to his knees, his waist, his arms, it rose; 
one step more and it would be up to his neck. 

“I will have to swim it,” he said to him- 
self, and even at that moment he was swept 
off his feet and borne struggling into the 
deeper water. He had wondered a little 
earlier in the day why the bluejackets had not 
swum across instead of going around that long, 
hot way by the road. It came to him now in 
a sudden flash that seasoned sailors knew more 
about the tide currents than did boys, that he 
had done an inexcusably foolish thing. He 
swam with all his strength, wildly at first; he 


ii6 The Island of Appledore 

sank, came up, and struck out again. He was 
at first angry to find he had no hope of reach- 
ing the other shore; then his anger turned 
quickly to a single thought — could he possibly 
struggle back to land again? So weary was 
he with all he had recently been through, that 
he found suddenly his strength was going. 
He realized that the current, firmly and 
surely, was bearing him down to the mouth of 
the stream and carrying him out to sea, to be 
lost in the tossing waves and the blanket of 
heavy fog, yet he could make scarcely an ef- 
fort to save himself. 

He remembered suddenly that no one would 
have the faintest idea what had become of 
him, that Sally would search for him every- 
where, would call and call in vain, for he 
would have apparently vanished from the face 
of the earth. She would be left alone there 
with a helpless delirious man, and with 
Heaven knew what lurking terrors in the dark 
old mill. The thought gave him strength to 
put every last atom of energy into one final 
endeavour and to struggle free of the current 
just as it was sweeping him past the last point 
of rocks. He felt the force of the tide abate 
a little, then he drifted into an eddy and came 


The Island of Appledore 1 17 

quietly to shore on a bit of gravel beach. 

For a long time he lay panting and ex- 
hausted, making no effort to move. It 
seemed as though he would never get his lungs 
full of air again, so completely had he spent 
both his breath and his strength. At last he 
sat up, discovered to his surprise that he was 
still half in the water, crawled up the bank 
and began trying to wring out his dripping 
clothes. 

“I don’t think there is much fun in adven- 
tures that you have all alone,” was the grave 
comment that he made to himself as he stum- 
bled up the beach. 

“Now, just what can I tell Sally?” he was 
thinking further when Sally’s own voice in- 
terrupted him. He heard her quick feet 
coming down the path and heard her voice, 
raised high in real terror, crying, 

“Billy— Billy Wentworth!” 

He ran up through the bushes and met her 
as she came flying toward him through the 
mist. 

“Come quick,” she cried; “come quick. 
It’s Captain Saulsby. I — I, oh, Billy, I’m so 
frightened!” 

Together they sped back up the path to the 


ii8 The Island of Appledore 

mill, tripping over roots, stumbling on the 
moss-covered stones, gasping in their terrified 
haste. As they came near Billy heard a 
strange sound, the Captain’s voice surely, but 
high and queer and cracked, shouting out what 
must have been meant for a song of the sea. 
He went up the steps in one breathless leap 
and came inside the mill. 

Captain Saulsby was in the middle of the 
room, lurching and staggering as he tried to 
walk, waving his arms and shouting as loud 
as his broken old voice would let him. Billy 
ran to him and tried to lead him back to the 
bench, but was shaken off with a quite unex- 
pected force. 

“Let me go,” he cried ; “don’t keep me back ; 
they all want to keep me back. Do they think 
I’ll stay below when it’s my watch?” 

He staggered a step forward, swayed and 
collapsed upon the floor in a heap. 

Somehow they got him back upon the bench 
and Sally tucked him in with the blankets and 
pillows she had brought. Yet the moment his 
strength revived he was struggling to get up 
again, shouting and raging at them both. 
Billy held him down with all his strength but 
was scarcely able to keep him quiet. At last 


The Island of Appledore 119 

the old man’s excitement seemed to die down 
a little and he lay still, apparently quite ex- 
hausted. He kept repeating, however, what 
he had been shouting a moment before. 

“It’s my watch,” he insisted over and over 
in a broken whisper. “Let me go, it’s my 
watch.” 

He lay quiet finally, and Billy and Sally, 
both quite worn out, leaned dimply against 
either side of the bench. 

“Will this horrible night ever end?” 
thought Billy. “Is there anything left now 
that can still happen?” 

It seemed almost in answer to his unspoken 
words that there came again a noise above 
them. It was no faint creaking this time, but 
the unmistakable sound of running feet, the 
banging of a door and the slam of a window 
thrown suddenly wide open. There was a 
loud shout in the wood outside to the right of 

them, it was answered immediately by a sec- 
ond, this time from the left, and there was a 
heavy rustling and crashing as of somebody 
running at headlong speed through the under- 
brush. There was a quick, breathless silence, 

then, above them, the sound of a sharp metallic 
click. 


120 The Island of Appledore 

Sally got up, marched to the fireplace and 
took down the candle that burned on the man- 
tel. 

“I can’t stand it any longer,” she said firmly; 
“I’m going to see who’s up there.” 

“No, no,” cried Billy, “you shan’t; you 
mustn’t. If you have to find out, I am the 
one to go.” 

“You can’t go,” she returned briefly. 
“Captain Saulsby will lie still for you, but I 
can’t do anything with him. You can’t leave 
him.” 

This was so true that Billy was forced to 
accept it. He did remove his arm for a min- 
ute, but the restless patient sat up at once and 
had to be forced down again among the pil- 
lows. 

“You see,” said Sally, almost triumphantly, 
and went on toward the stairs. 

“Sally, don’t,” gasped Billy again, but he 
pled in vain. 

“I can’t stand it not to know,” was Sally’s 
only answer. When once she was set upon 
a thing it was quite impossible to turn her, a 
fact that had never been so well proved as 
now. She advanced to the stairs, leaving 
Billy in the dark, climbed to the first landing 


The Island of Appledore 121 

and turned back to smile at him. She was 
certainly not afraid; she was of an equal cer- 
tainty rather pleased at his helplessness to stop 
her. 

She turned at the landing to go up the next 
flight. There must have been a draught un- 
der the closed door at the top, for it made her 
candle wink and flicker, but she marched on 
undismayed. She looked a dauntless, little 
figure as she went up from step to step, the 
moving light shining on her thick, yellow 
braids and the crossed straps of her white 
apron, and making her fat little shadow dance 
behind her on the wall. 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE STRANGER AT THE MILL 

There was a pause as Sally struggled with 
an obstinate latch, then she opened the door at 
the head of the stairs and disappeared. The 
removal of the light seemed to soothe the old 
sailor, since he lay still, while Billy stood lis- 
tening — listening, for what, he did not quite 
know. 

What he did hear was the sound that of all 
others he least expected. With a sharp crack 
that echoed throughout the frail old building, 
a rifle went off directly overhead. An instant 
later he heard Sally’s voice, upraised in the 
terrified screaming of a thoroughly fright- 
ened child. He forgot Captain Saulsby com- 
pletely, forgot everything except that he must 
run to help Sally. The door on the stairs had 
swung shut in the draft: it had slammed and 
latched itself so that he had a moment’s strug- 
gle to get it open. When he did so finally 
and plunged into the room above, he had again 
122 


The Island of Appledore 123 

to wait for the passage of a second to make 
out just what was there. 

An oil lamp stood upon the table in the 
middle of the room, but its light beneath the 
green shade fell in a narrow circle and left 
all the corners in darkness. He was vaguely 
aware that there was a man over yonder by 
the window, and that he held something in 
his hand over which he worked and muttered. 
It was a rifle, in whose magazine the cartridge 
evidently had jammed and had prevented the 
immediate firing of a second shot. Yet, even 
as Billy realized that this must be the case, 
the thing snapped into place and the hammer 
once more was drawn back with a sharp click. 
Sally, standing near him, dropped her candle, 
which fortunately went out, put her hands to 
her ears, and shrieked aloud, 

“Stop him, Billy; he’s going to do it again!” 

It was not their lives the man was threat- 
ening. He crouched over the window sill, 
steadied the barrel of his weapon against the 
ledge and took long, deliberate aim. Billy, 
as he ran across the room, could see over the 
stranger’s shoulder, down between the trees 
to the creek and the high rocks at the edge 
of the little harbour. There on the point in 


124 The Island of Appledore 

a patch of brilliant moonlight, stood one of the 
bluejackets who had landed with them. He 
held a flag in each hand and was spelling out 
some signalled message in frantic haste. The 
ship showed vaguely in the dark nearly half 
a mile away to the eastward, but the moon 
hung low in the west and evidently formed a 
sharp background against which the moving 
flags could be plainly read. It seemed as 
though the sailor must know what danger 
threatened to bring his message to an end for 
he glanced backward over his shoulder more 
than once, yet never failed to continue swing- 
ing his flags with steady precision. 

Billy was only quick enough to jerk at the 
stranger’s arm just as the rifle went off again 
with a startling crash and a quick spurt of 
flame. He saw the sailor on the point stagger 
and drop the flag from his hand; at the same 
moment he felt a stunning blow upon the side 
of his head and his shoulder so that he seemed 
to see, for a second, room, lamp and Sally, all 
go around and around in confusing circles. 
He recovered himself quickly, but not in time 
to intercept the enemy’s next move. 

It was one of retreat, for evidently discovery 
was the thing most dreaded by this hidden 


The Island of Appledore 125 

stranger of the mill. Billy had only an in- 
stant’s view of his face, but he recognized, in 
that instant, the narrow, black-eyed counte- 
nance that had once peered at him from be- 
hind the rocks and that had so frightened 
Johann Happs when it rose above the wall. 
The man leaped over the window sill and 
dropped upon the ladder-like stairs outside, 
but the rotten timbers gave way beneath him 
and he fell heavily to the ground. The thick 
bushes below must have broken his fall, how- 
ever, for he jumped up and made off into the 
dense undergrowth, while shouts on either 
hand showed that he was being watched for, 
and a crashing and tearing of branches indi- 
cated that the pursuit was hot. 

Billy turned back from the window and 
went over to Sally. 

“Are you hurt?” they both asked each other 
in the same breath. On being assured that the 
glancing blow Billy had received was “noth- 
ing, just nothing at all,” Sally sighed deeply 
with relief and picked up her fallen candle. 

“It was lucky I did not set us all on fire,” 
she said shamefacedly. “I — I never could 
abide things that go off all of a sudden like 
that. Oh, Billy, what about the Captain?” 


126 The Island of Appledore 

This reminder sent Billy downstairs almost 
as rapidly as he had come up. Captain 
Saulsby had been struggling to leave his couch 
again, but so firmly had Sally wrapped him 
up in blankets that he had only just succeeded 
in getting free of them and so had managed 
to do himself no harm. He was very querul- 
ous in his complaints when they laid him back 
upon the pillows, but submitted rather more 
meekly than before. 

There followed a wait; it would have been 
hard for them to tell whether it lasted the half 
of an hour, or for five whole ones. The black 
shadows outside turned slowly to grey, the 
moonlight faded and disappeared, a fresh 
wind began to blow the fog away in shore. 
Somewhere out yonder in the woods a bird be- 
gan to sing, offering them their first hope that 
the night with its desperate anxieties and ter- 
rors was at last giving place to day. Billy 
went to the window and threw it open so that 
Sally too, from her place beside Captain 
Saulsby, might hear the promise of the dawn. 

The door pushed open and there came 
slowly in the bluejacket whom Billy had last 
seen signalling on the beach, a target for the 
stranger’s rifle. 


The Island of Appledore 127 

“Been quite a night, hasn’t it?” the man said 
cheerfully as he sat down on the stool and 
wiped his face. 

“Did he hit you?” “Did he hurt you?” 
the two children asked in a single breath. 

“Never touched me,” was the answer. 
“The first bullet went over my head and the 
second struck the staff of the flag and knocked 
it out of my hand — jarred my elbow some- 
thing horrid, and nearly threw me down — 
but that’s all the harm it did. The real mis- 
chief is that I’m afraid the man has got away.” 

“But he can’t get off the Island,” Billy ob- 
jected. 

“That is just what he has done,” the sailor 
answered. “He knew the paths too well and 
left us tangled up in the thickets. We gave 
him a hot chase, until he got over to a house 
that stands on the shore beyond the woods, 
helped himself to the owner’s catboat, and put 
off before we could get anywhere near. We 
have signalled to the ship, though, and 
they’ll see that he doesn’t get clear away. We 
have his friend Jarreth in jail, and this man 
should be joining him there before very 
long.” 

“It was your father’s boat he got away in, 


128 The Island of Appledore 

Sally,” exclaimed the boy, “and she can sail 
pretty fast.” 

“I believe Uncle Sam has something that 
can catch her,” the sailor said. “The fellow 
won’t get off so easy as all that.” 

“And you have put Harvey Jarreth in 
jail?” Sally questioned. 

“Yes; you should see him, fuming and fuss- 
ing and strutting up and down like a mad tur- 
key-cock, telling every one that ‘his friend’ 
will bail him out; that ‘his friend’ will make 
us all suffer for such insults. Much ‘his 
friend’ will ever help him! There really isn’t 
a thing to hold Jarreth for, I’m afraid, unless 
we catch the other one. Harvey has just been 
made a tool of, but he won’t believe it.” 

“How did you know the man was down 
here at the mill?” Billy asked. 

“We didn’t, for at first we had no notion 
that he was even on the Island. When he 
used to make his visits to Jarreth he always 
apparently came over from the mainland so 
that it was quite a time before it dawned on 
us that he was staying here all the while. He 
had covered up his tracks pretty well, but I 
don’t quite know how he meant to keep him- 
self hid after he took to shooting. I suppose 


The Island of Appledore 129 

he was so excited that he hardly knew what he 
was about.” 

Captain Saulsby moved and groaned a lit- 
tle. The sailor came over and stood looking 
down on him with good-natured and troubled 
sympathy. 

“I ought to have made some one come back 
for you,” he said, “but the orders we landed 
with, were to hunt this fellow out, and we had 
no time to think of any one else. The two 
officers that were ashore had got wind of him 
already, so we had a time finding them, even, 
before we got after the German. We finally 
traced him down to the point here, but when 
we looked in at the window of the mill and 
heard the old captain swearing and shouting 
and saw only you two bending over him, we 
didn’t think our friend could possibly be there. 
I knew you had been here since morning and 
the fellow had been seen at the crossroads in 
the afternoon.” 

“He must have come in when I was asleep,” 
said Billy. It seemed more and more that 
his nap had been an especially unfortunate 
one. 

“I had orders to go down and signal to the 
ship that we hadn’t found him,” the sailor 


130 The Island of Appledore 

went on, “and as soon as I had finished the 
message I was coming back to find out if we 
could help you. I looked back over my shoul- 
der to see if the others were coming, and it was 
then I happened to glance up and see our Ger- 
man friend in the window. He was so inter- 
ested in trying to make out the message I was 
sending that he must have forgotten everything 
else. He had not even put out the lamp when 
he pushed the window wide open, so I could 
see him clear and black against the lighted 
room, and I guessed in a second who he was. 
I broke off my message and instead began 
telling the ship as quickly as I could that we 
had found him. He must have been able to 
read that, for the next minute — ping — a bullet 
went by me and stuck in the sand.” 

One of the officers now appeared in the 
doorway, come to inquire into the welfare of 
Captain Saulsby. 

“We will get him home,” he said; “the tide 
is off the causeway now and my men can 
carry him across to his own house, or perhaps 
on to the hospital in the village. I am afraid 
he is pretty sick after all these adventures! I 
wish we could have had time to help you 
sooner.” 


The Island of Appledore 131 

Four of the sailors bore the old captain 
down to the shore while Billy went home with 
Sally Shute through the woods. The fog was 
clearing and it was getting light at last; the 
stars were growing dimmer and dimmer and 
the eastern horizon showed a streak of gold. 
The two stumbled along, too weary to watch 
the coming dawn, to hear the birds that were 
beginning to sing, or even to say much to each 
other. They plodded down the lane in si- 
lence and reached Sally’s gate at last. 

“You’re a fine, brave girl, Sally,” Billy said, 
as they came up the path. But she would 
have none of his praise. 

“I was just so curious to see what was up 
there,” she said, “that I could not possibly 
help going to find out. I — I wish I hadn’t 
screamed so when the rifle went off.” 

Early as it was, there proved to be a visitor 
there before them. Some one was sitting on 
the doorstone with his face buried in his 
hands, some one whose shock of rumpled yel- 
low hair told plainly that it could be no other 
than Johann Happs. 

“I — I came to see about the clocks, if they 
were running — ” he began to explain lamely. 

“It is rather a queer time to come,” Sally 


132 The Island of Appledore 

commented severely, regarding him with some 
suspicion. The look of utter misery that he 
gave her, however, melted her warm little 
heart and she sat down impulsively upon the 
step beside him. 

“What is the matter, Joe, tell me,” she 
urged. 

Johann shook his head in mute anguish, and 
said nothing. 

“It is not anything,” he finally managed to 
get out; “not anything at all.” 

Billy’s mind had been rapidly putting two 
and two together so that he broke forth now 
with the question: 

“Johann, did you see that German go by 
here and take the catboat?” 

“No — no,” Johann began earnestly. “I 
don’t know whom you mean.” But his face 
belied his words. 

“You did see him, you did!” exclaimed 
Billy. “Why in the world didn’t you stop 
him?” 

Sally added gently, patting his knee to re- 
assure him: 

“Don’t be so upset, Johann. Tell us why 
you didn’t stop him.” 

“How could I stop him?” Johann replied. 



Johann shook his head in mute anguish 




The Island of Appledore 133 

“It was not my place to do so. And anyway, 
he had a revolver.” 

“Did you see it?” Billy asked mercilessly. 

“No,” was the answer, “but he carried one 
in his pocket: he always does.” 

Then, seeing how utterly he had betrayed 
himself by this last speech, he got up and 
walked slowly away down toward the shore, 
his one object being apparently to hide his 
stricken face from them. 

The boy was about to hurry after him, but 
Sally put her hand upon his arm. 

“Let him alone,” she said; “the German is 
gone and we can’t do anything now. No, 
Billy, don’t go after him.” 

Billy hesitated, feeling, in spite of himself, 
that his anger was beginning to change to sym- 
pathy. He would still have followed, had not 
Sally’s hand restrained him and Sally’s voice 
become insistent. 

“I know him better than you do,” she main- 
tained, “and I won’t believe any harm of 
Johann. No, let him go.” 

Billy walked slowly back through the 
woods, across the causeway and up past the 
meadow to Captain Saulsby’s little house. 
The opening poppies were blowing in the 


134 The Island of Appledore 

morning wind, matching with their pink and 
scarlet the colors spreading across the sky. 
The fresh breeze felt pleasant on Billy’s face, 
and made him breathe more quickly. He was 
weary beyond words, dead tired to the utmost 
limit; but he felt that for two nights and a 
day he had been living indeed. The very last 
vessels of the big battle fleet were still trailing 
away across the horizon, and he stopped to 
watch until the final line of smoke had dis- 
appeared. 

He turned and went slowly up to the cot- 
tage. The old captain had revived enough 
to insist that he should be carried nowhere 
else, and had had the force to get his own way. 
A doctor had already been summoned and a 
nurse installed, so that he would have no lack 
of proper care. The doctor had finished his 
inspection, and was just coming out as Billy 
reached the doorstep. 

“He certainly has had enough to kill any 
three ordinary men of his age,” Billy heard 
him say, “but an old sailor like that is made 
of iron and rubber and rhinoceros hide. I 
think we will pull him through.” 

Billy walked on, down the path, out be- 
tween the willows and along the road toward 


The Island of Appledore 135 

the hotel. He heard a deep whistle as he 
turned the corner by the wharf, and saw a 
steamer landing at the pier. It was the night 
boat from Boston, bringing Aunt Mattie home. 
As he drew near a little group of people dis- 
embarked and his aunt came toward him look- 
ing very pale and bedraggled. 

“It was good of you to get up so early, and 
come down to meet me, Billy,” she said 
faintly. “We had such a rough passage, and 
the stewardess was so inattentive. It has 
really been a terrible night!” 


CHAPTER IX 


THE CALLING OF THE ISLAND 

The on-shore wind, blowing the cloud of 
fog before it, was a better friend to the Ger- 
man fugitive than it was to his pursuers. The 
search was a long and blind one, and all of 
the boats that scattered to find him came back 
with only failure to report. Some of them 
had seen a big white yacht go by them in the 
mist, but as such vessels were so common 
along the coast at that season, little notice had 
been taken of her. One boat, indeed, had 
come close enough to ask whether she had 
seen any such craft as the catboat they were 
seeking, and had been directed to bear off to 
the southward, as the yacht had sighted just 
such a boat near Andrew’s Point. When the 
little catboat was finally found, however, float- 
ing idly with the tide, far to the north of An- 
drew’s Point and just where the yacht might 
easily have passed her, suspicions began to 
arise as to how the German had escaped. In- 
136 


The Island of Appledore 137 

quiry was made all along the coast, but with- 
out bringing any news to light. The million- 
aire purchaser of an estate on Appledore Is- 
land seemed to have vanished completely. 

Almost the first words that Captain Saulsby 
spoke were to ask what had become of that 
“son-of-a-gun of a friend of the Kaiser’s.’’ 
When he learned that in spite of all possible 
efforts the man had got clean away, he an- 
nounced at first that he was too disgusted to 
try to get well ; but altered his decision a little 
later. 

“If the whole United States Navy can’t 
catch a man like that,” he said weakly to 
Billy, “I guess it’s Ned Saulsby’s duty to keep 
in the world a little longer, and try to be a 
match for the rascal.” 

The doctor said that the old sailor’s recov- 
ery was miraculously quick; the Captain him- 
self, that it was “slower than a wet week.” 

“That woman,” he would say, indicating 
the long-suffering nurse, “that woman that’s 
all rustles and starch and has no real heart, 
she keeps me down, when the only thing I 
need to get well is to walk out along the gar- 
den path and feel the good, warm sunshine on 
my back.” 


138 The Island of Appledore 

A day came, however, when “that woman’s” 
reign was over and she and the old captain 
bade each other good-bye. They had become 
fast friends even in spite of their frequent 
clashes of opinion, so the parting, which took 
place in Billy’s presence, was a most affec- 
tionate one. 

“I may have spoken roughly to you, my 
dear,” Captain Saulsby said, apologetically, 
“but I was sure, even at the time, that you 
were forgiving me right along. And there’s 
no one that can deny that you spoke roughly 
to me many a time, and good cause you had to 
do it, too. I’m that spoiled that, now I’m to 
be my own master again, I really don’t know 
how to hand myself my chicken broth.” 

“I’m truly sorry to leave you, Captain,” the 
girl answered; “you are quite the worst pa- 
tient I ever tried to manage, but I think you 
have done me the most credit.” 

She went away down the path, Captain 
Saulsby looking after her with a very grave 
face. Then he turned and hobbled into the 
house to kindle a fire in his little stove. 

“It’s too bad she’s gone,” he said solemnly 
to Billy, “but — the way I’ve longed for fried 
onions!” He heaved a mighty sigh of relief 


The Island of Appledore 139 

and put a frying pan on the stove to heat. 
The whole of the cottage became filled pres- 
ently with an odor that caused Captain 
Saulsby to sniff delightedly, but that would 
have made the nurse throw open every door 
and window. 

When the delectable repast was over he 
came and sat down in the doorway and filled 
a pipe whose perfume rivalled that of even 
the onions. 

“I’ll have to smoke night and day for a 
while,” he said, “to catch up on myself. 
Whew-ew, but that is good!” 

Jacky Shute had laboured manfully in the 
garden during Captain Saulsby’s illness. 
Even his small remnant of a conscience smote 
him when he was tempted to neglect the weeds, 
and the Captain’s comment, “ship-shape as 
can be, Jacky; I didn’t know you had it in 
you,” made his small countenance beam with 
pride. 

The delicate, crinkled poppies were bloom- 
ing abundantly throughout the garden. It 
was the season when they were in their full 
glory, when all else in Captain Saulsby’s lit- 
tle place, the vegetables, the currant bushes, 
and the fruit trees, must be quite cast into the 


140 The Island of Appledore 

shade. The old sailor ventured forth on 
a short tour of inspection, and actually man- 
aged to reach the bench down by the hedge 
where he and Billy had sat upon the day they 
became acquainted. 

“It doesn’t look so bad,” he remarked com- 
placently as he viewed his small domain. 
“Of course, raising flowers and garden truck 
is a mighty little business after you have once 
followed the sea, but an old sailor likes to 
have things as they should be, whether he’s 
at sea or ashore. No,” he looked over the 
place again with a pleased smile, “no, it 
doesn’t look so bad.” 

One of the summer visitors came along the 
path to ask for some of the packets of poppy- 
seed that Captain Saulsby, although he made 
a business of selling them, always parted with 
most grudingly. This woman he looked over 
long and severely, and asked her many search- 
ing questions before he finally drew a package 
of seeds from his pocket and graciously al- 
lowed her to buy it. 

“She looks to me like one of those women 
who would try to grow poppies in a pot,” he 
said to Billy after she had gone. “I didn’t 
really quite trust her, but I gave her the bene- 


The Island of Appledore 141 

fit of the doubt. She came from up Boston 
way: that was what saved her. I hope she 
will really take care of them.” 

“I’ve noticed you won’t sell seeds to every- 
body,” Billy said. “Don’t you like to think 
that your flowers will be growing every- 
where?” 

“They won’t grow unless people treat them 
right,” he answered. “There’s some women, 
those young giggly things with embroidery 
parasols, that think my flowers are ‘so attrac- 
tive’ and that they can grow them to pin to the 
front of their ruffled white dresses. Much 
good poppies will do any one who tries to wear 
them! They droop and die in ten minutes 
and the sweet young things say ‘Oh, dear!’ 
and throw them away. And there are others 
who say my place here is ‘so original and 
quaint’ and they must have a corner in their 
gardens just like it, so they take the seeds away 
to plant them somewhere in the Middle West 
where the ground bakes as hard as iron and 
the hot air dries up the buds before they can 
open. No, poppies have to have cool earth 
to dig their toes into, and cool salt air to 
breathe; it’s sea breezes that put the colour 
into them, and a good wet fog is their meat and 


142 The Island of Appledore 

drink. Poor things, I hate to think of them 
off somewhere drooping and withering for a 
whiff of fresh salt wind.” 

“Captain Saulsby,” said Billy gravely, “I 
do believe you care a lot for those flowers of 
yours. You are always saying you don’t, but 
I think I won’t believe you again. I can see 
by the very way you look at them that you 
love them.” 

“No, can you?” exclaimed the old sailor in 
genuine surprise. “Why — why — maybe I do 
now, I never thought of it.” He looked about 
the garden as though suddenly seeing it in a 
new light. “I hated the whole place bitterly 
enough when I first knew I must stop here all 
the rest of my life, and my only wish was that 
the time might not be long. But I’ve worked 
and tended and watched over it for five years 
and — well, you are right. I have learned to 
love it and never knew. That’s a queer thing, 
now, isn’t it?” 

“How glad you must be that it wasn’t sold,” 
Billy went on, “that all that trouble and worry 
is over for good.” 

“I’m not so sure of its being for good,” the 
old captain returned reflectively; “the fellow 
got clear away, and as long as he’s still free 


The Island of Appledore 143 

to make trouble, there will be mischief brew- 
ing. And there’s plenty more like him where 
he came from, too. No, there is still danger 
for Appledore Island, I am sure of that.” 

“Do you think that German clock-maker 
could have helped him to get away?” Billy 
asked. “I have wondered a good deal if they 
didn’t have something to do with each other.” 

“There’s Germans and Germans,” the old 
man answered. “I put a lot of faith in 
Johann Happs, but the trouble of it is you 
can’t always tell. I think a time is coming, 
though, coming pretty soon, when things will 
show plainly which kind of German is which. 
But I may be wrong.” 

Their talk was interrupted here by a visi- 
tor, not a summer tourist this time, but a per- 
son of a very different kind. It was Harvey 
Jarreth, fresh and smiling and sure of him- 
self again, in spite of his unpleasant experi- 
ence with the naval authorities and his week- 
end visit to Appledore’s jail. There had been 
no evidence to bring against him as to his 
transactions with the prosperous stranger, so 
that he had been set free after giving many 
promises that he would be more careful in 
future. His reputation for shrewdness had 


144 The Island of Appledore 

suffered greatly for a little time; but as the 
weeks passed and people began to forget the 
disturbance that they had never quite under- 
stood, Harvey Jarreth began to come into his 
own again. 

He was jauntily dressed as ever today, in 
the light grey clothes that made his sandy com- 
plexion still sandier, and that by their extreme 
of fashion showed just how many years they 
lagged behind the present mode. His straw 
hat was a little frayed and battered at the 
edges, but he wore it at just such a cheerful 
angle as when Billy had first seen him. 

“Well, Captain,” he began genially, “that 
was a queer business about that city friend of 
mine, wasn’t it? And the joke of it is that it 
looks just now as though you had been right 
about him. That’s pretty funny. Ha, ha!” 

“It will go right on being just as big a 
joke,” returned the Captain sourly. “You 
had better go home and practice laughing at 
it until you can manage something better than 
that cackling you’re doing now. It takes a 
lot of learning for a man to know how to laugh 
at himself.” 

Jarreth’s thin face flushed and he shifted his 
feet uneasily. 


The Island of Appledore 145 

“The joke is going to be on you, yet, Ned 
Saulsby,” he said, “for you’ll find you’re going 
to part with your land and not get much of a 
price for it in the end. You had your chance 
to sell out fair, and didn’t; now you’ll see that 
there are other ways. That friend of mine 
was as straight as a string. It would take a 
smarter man than he was to fool Harvey Tar- 
reth.” 

“He was so crooked he could hide behind a 
corkscrew,” returned the Captain with spirit. 
“And he has fooled you once, and will likely 
fool you again. The first time he got you into 
jail: look out it isn’t the penitentiary you go 
to after his next visit. He helped to get you 
out of one just as generously as he will help 
you out of the other.” 

“He felt real bad about my being in jail,” 
Jarreth maintained heatedly, his temper evi- 
dently becoming more and more ruffled. 

“You’ve heard from him then?” inquired 
Captain Saulsby quickly. “And why didn’t 
you tell that to the people who are still look- 
ing for him?” 

“It’s not my way to get a friend into trou- 
ble,” was the answer. “Yes, I heard from him 
and he sent me a box of cigars. Have one?” 


146 The Island of Appledore 

He reached into his breast pocket, but Cap- 
tain Saulsby stopped him with a gesture. 
Cigars were a rare luxury with him, but not 
to be acquired in any such way as this. 

“No, thank you,” he said drily. “I’ve al- 
ways heard that Germans smoke the worst 
cigars in the world.” 

Harvey Jarreth thrust the proffered gift 
back into his pocket. 

“All right,” he answered briskly. “I’m 
not the fellow to force things on people that 
don’t want them. As for Germans, how about 
that clock-maker that you’re so thick with? 
And it will be you that will be making me a 
present before long, Ned Saulsby, making me 
a present of this land; for the price you’ll get 
for it will bring it down to about that. 
You’ve been a careless man about your taxes, 
Ned, and nothing short of criminal about the 
way you’ve looked after your title-deeds.” 
He looked about the garden with an apprais- 
ing eye, as though it were already his own. 
“You won’t be planting poppies next year,” 
he said, “unless you care to plant them on an- 
other man’s ground. Well, good morning.” 

He walked off strutting jauntily, swinging 
his cane. 


The Island of Appledore 147 

“He’s got more need to lean on that stick 
than to flirt it around like that,” muttered 
Captain Saulsby. “Ah — h!” 

The last swing had cut off the heads of a 
half-dozen tall white poppies, whereupon Jar- 
reth turned about with an impudent grin to 
see if the old man dared protest. 

“Don’t take any notice of him,” growled 
the Captain ; “that is what will hurt him worst 
of anything.” 

So Billy, by great effort, managed to keep 
quiet, and the disagreeable visitor walked 
away without the satisfaction of a word of 
comment. 

“Do you really think he can get your land, 
Captain Saulsby?” Billy asked anxiously, as 
soon as Jarreth was safely out of hearing. 

“I don’t quite know,” the sailor admitted 
slowly; “you see the place has belonged to 
my people so long I never thought about hav- 
ing much proof of the ownership. Harvey 
is right when he says I’ve been careless about 
taxes and things. He held a mortgage on the 
land once, and though it was paid off in my 
father’s time I’m blessed if I know if there is 
anything to show for the payment at my end. 
There’s sure to be plenty of documents of all 


148 The Island of Appledore 

kinds at his. He is terribly anxious, for some 
reason, to get those hard, lean fingers of his 
on the property.” 

He puffed at his pipe for quite a little while 
in silence, then spoke again. 

“That’s a dangerous kind of man, Billy 
Wentworth, the most risky kind a community 
can have. A man who thinks he’s smart and 
isn’t — that’s about as bad a combination as can 
be made. Jarreth has a reputation to live up 
to, for being shrewd and quick and able to 
get the best of people ; he nearly lost that repu- 
tation and he will stop at nothing to get it back. 
He doesn’t mean any harm, he hardly means 
to be really dishonest; but he’s so bound to 
prove himself smart that he will let anybody 
who is more of a rascal than he is, make a fool 
of him. I’m not easy in my mind when I 
think of him and of that ‘friend’ of his that 
he’s so bound to prove is straight. No, I 
don’t like it.” 

And when Billy went home to supper he 
left the Captain still sitting on the bench, evi- 
dently turning his anxious thoughts to the same 
matter, if one could judge by the way he 
smoked his pipe in short, troubled puffs. 

The days went by, the poppies drooped their 


The Island of Appledore 149 

heads and scattered their petals in the winds, 
the early apples turned yellow on Captain 
Saulsby’s trees, and the blackberries ripened 
along the wall. The time of Billy’s visit had 
come to an end; the morning of his departure 
arrived, and he came down, dressed in his trav- 
elling clothes, to say good-bye to his dear, 
good friend. 

He walked in past the gap in the stone wall 
and between the bent, old willow trees, went 
slowly up the path and down through the 
garden, not at all eager for this last parting. 
He did not quite know why he was so un- 
comfortable and depressed; he thought per- 
haps it might be that his stiff collar felt so 
uneasy against his sunburned neck and so 
made him miserable, more or less, all over. 
He was going West again ; surely he was glad 
about that. He assured himself over and over 
again, that, yes, he was very glad. 

Captain Saulsby was sitting smoking in the 
sun down by the hedge. They talked for a lit- 
tle while of various things, Billy somehow 
feeling reluctant to say that this visit must be 
the last. 

“Got your shore hat, I see,” the Captain 
observed finally. “That means the end of the 


150 The Island of Appledore 

season for sure and that you’re leaving us. 
How early next spring will you be coming 
back?” 

Billy was a little surprised, and for the sec- 
ond time that day. Early in the morning he 
had walked through the woods to say good- 
bye to Sally Shute. She too had asked when 
he would come back, taking it cheerfully for 
granted that he would never fail to return 
soon. 

“I’m not coming back next year,” he said 
now; “we’re going out to the Rockies to camp, 
my father and mother and I, and the year 
after — well, I hardly know where we’ll be 
then. We don’t often go to the same place 
twice. No, maybe I won’t ever be coming 
back.” 

Captain Saulsby knocked the ashes out of 
his pipe and smiled slowly. 

“You’ll be coming back,” he said; “there’s 
nobody can keep away always. You’ll think 
that the prairies, and the big mountains, and 
all the wonderful things in the West can sat- 
isfy you, but a time will come, perhaps all in 
a minute, when you’ll remember the shining 
blue of the water out there, and the sound of 
the surf on the beach, and the smell of wet 


The Island of Appledore 151 

sea-weed when the tide goes down. A boy 
who’s been on the sea, and in it and near it 
and of it as you have been this summer, Billy 
Wentworth, can never get away from it 
again.” 

“I’m not so sure,” said Billy; “of course 
I’ve liked it and all that but — ” 

“You can’t know yet,” his friend replied. 
“There was my garden here; for five years 
I thought I hated it, and now, since you drew 
my notice, I find I’ve learned to love it. And 
you’ll find you love all this — ” he swept his 
arm in a wide gesture to include the rocky 
shore, the high, green hill of Appledore and 
the wide stretch of sunny sea — “yes, that you 
love it too well to stop away. Well, good- 
bye; I hope you’ll have a good passage, but 
I fear it’s going to be a rough one.” 

It was true that, although the sun was shin- 
ing, there were banks of clouds in the west 
and signs of coming stormy weather. 

“Do you hear the island singing?” Captain 
Saulsby said. “That means wind for sure.” 

It was a strange thing about the rocks of 
Appledore that, when rising winds blew across 
them in a certain way, there was a queer, hol- 
low, humming sound that the fisherman said 


152 The Island of Appledore 

was “Appledore Island calling.” Billy had 
heard it before ; it made him vaguely unhappy 
and homesick now. 

“It won’t take the boat long to get me 
ashore,” he said. “I’m going by train from 
Rockford, not all the way by sea to Boston. 
Well, good-bye, Captain Saulsby; I — I — I 
can’t — good-bye.” 

He had meant to thank the old sailor for 
his many kindnesses, words that seemed sim- 
ple enough to speak; but in the end he said 
nothing, merely turned away and walked down 
through the willow trees, never looking back. 
He bade farewell to his aunt on the pier, em- 
barked upon the waiting steamer and headed 
away toward the shore, toward the West, to- 
ward all the things he knew. Yet he stood on 
deck and looked back as long as he could see 
toward Appledore Island, until Captain 
Saulsby’s red-roofed cottage had vanished, un- 
til points and headlands disappeared and the 
green hills sank and became smaller and 
smaller on the horizon. 

The winds rose, the boat rolled a trifle, but 
still did not disturb his steady watching. He 
thought of the friends he had made there, of 


The Island of Appledore 153 

the adventures he had been through, of the 
dangers that still hung about the place. 

“Will I ever see it again?” he wondered, 
over and over. This was still the burden of 
his thoughts when the boat rounded the point 
into Rockford harbour and Appledore Island 
vanished from his sight. Yet he still seemed 
to hear it calling, even after his straining eyes 
could see it no longer. 


CHAPTER X 

THREE QUARTERS OF A YEAR 

Billy went back to school and saw the fol- 
lowing months of work and play go by in a 
dizzy procession of speeding days. Thanks- 
giving and Christmas seemed to stop a little 
longer than the others; he spent the one at a 
town on one of the Great Lakes, ice-boating, 
and the other in Chicago, where he had some 
cousins. They were pleasant days and weeks 
and months ; yet he saw them go by with some 
satisfaction, for he looked forward greatly to 
the time when his father and mother would 
come home. 

The Easter vacation approached and, on ac- 
count of some alterations to the school build- 
ings, was made much longer than usual. 
Billy, however, could get little satisfaction out 
of even such unexpected good fortune, for let- 
ters from South America had been becoming 
more and more doubtful as to the chance of 


154 


The Island of Appledore 155 

an early return, and one, arriving the morn- 
ing the holidays began, settled the matter 
finally. 

“Business moves too slowly in these Span- 
ish-American countries,” his father wrote, 
“and what you think you can do in one day 
always takes you two or three. Therefore 
plans for one year are almost bound to stretch 
into two, so do not be disappointed, son, if we 
do not come back until autumn.” 

Billy put down the letter when he had read 
so far and sat staring at the opposite wall. It 
seemed too hard to endure after he had waited 
patiently for so long. He picked up the page 
and read on. 

“Your mother and I have decided that since 
you must spend another summer alone you 
might as well have the camping trip you had 
so counted on last year. Ask any three of the 
boys you like and make all your own plans. 
Otto Bradford at Mason’s Falls will be the 
best guide for you to take; you remember we 
had him two years ago. Indeed, if your Eas- 
ter vacation is extended, as the headmaster 
wrote me it might be, you could run out to 
Montana and make your arrangements with 
Otto; that would probably be most satisfac- 


156 The Island of Appledore 

tory. You are old enough now to manage 
such matters.’’ 

Again Billy laid down the paper and sat 
thinking. Here was the thing that, next to 
his father’s and mother’s coming, he had long 
wanted above all others. A camping trip — 
among those wonderful mountains — planned 
by himself — to include just the boys he 
wanted. Whom should he ask? There 
was — 

“Come on, Billy Wentworth, or you’ll miss 
the train.” The shout from the hall below 
brought him quickly to his senses. They were 
all leaving for Chicago to play the last basket- 
ball game of the season ; it was from there that 
they were to scatter for the holidays. He 
seized his suitcase, jammed on his hat and ran 
downstairs. He would have to decide on the 
way whether he would go West at once or not. 

It was not unnatural, perhaps, that a party 
of boys wrapped up in their own and the 
school’s affairs, should have very little knowl- 
edge of the bigger matters of the outside 
world. Lately, however, events were becom- 
ing so exciting, situations were growing so 
tense, that every boy, the moment he got on 
the train, must have his paper and devour the 


The Island of Appledore 157 

daily news. For nearly three years the war 
had waged in Europe, a war far too big to 
realize, far too distant to be very disturbing 
to a schoolboy’s daily life. But now war was 
coming near, the war with Germany that every 
one suddenly discovered had been inevitable 
from the first, yet for which every one had 
been too busy to get ready. It was the week 
before Easter, the season of that April session 
of Congress when the war-bill slowly but 
surely made its way through Senate and 
House, and the possibility of a struggle be- 
came a final reality. 

The party of boys reached Chicago on Mon- 
day, and played their basket-ball game that 
evening. For a moment the victory that was 
so hardly but so triumphantly won by their 
team, blotted out in Billy’s mind the memory 
of what was stirring the whole world outside. 
Yet even on the way back to the hotel he felt 
the thrill in the air, he saw crowds gathering 
about the bulletin boards and heard some one 
say, “The President is addressing Congress 
now.” 

He went to bed clinging somehow to the 
obstinate thought, 

“There can’t be war, there can’t. Things 


158 The Island of Appledore 

like that happen to other people, in other 
places. Nothing happens here at home.” 

When he got up in the morning the war 
again seemed far away. The whole party of 
boys was to be taken out by their hosts of the 
rival school, to be shown some of the sights 
of Chicago before train time. They all stood 
waiting in the lobby for the automobiles to 
come up, when the mail was brought in and 
some one handed Billy a letter. 

It was a note from his aunt who had been 
spending the winter in Boston. 

“I am going down to Appledore Island for 
Easter,” it said, “although I have never been 
there so early in the season before. I have a 
fancy to try it, and wonder whether you would 
feel tempted to try it with me. I happened to 
hear that your vacation is to be longer than 
usual, so that it would give you time to come. 
I admit that the invitation does not seem a 
very exciting one, but, if you happen to have 
no other place to go, you might be glad of my 
company, as I shall be so glad to have yours.” 

There was a postscript added, 

“If you should happen to arrive before I do, 
and do not find the hotel ready, you could stay 
with Captain Saulsby.” 


The Island of Appledore 159 

The first motor rolled up to the door, Billy 
was called for, so he stuffed the letter into his 
pocket and hurried out. They were swept 
away through the crowded streets of Chicago, 
where spring was already showing in the green 
grass and blooming crocuses of the little 
squares. It was even more in evidence in Lin- 
coln Park where the shrubs and trees were put- 
ting out their new leaves and flowers were 
blooming all along the way. It made one feel 
queer and restless, Billy thought, as though one 
wanted something very badly and did not quite 
know what it was. It seemed strange how 
hard it was to make up his mind just what he 
was going to do. 

The lake was very blue there on their right 
hand as they drove along the Sheridan Road 
sweeping constantly through neat suburbs, 
some large, some small, but all alike in one 
thing: that every one in the world was busy 
planting a garden. They passed through bits 
of real country with fields and meadows and 
pasture lands, and stopped at last before a big 
iron gate that guarded an enclosure full of 
brick buildings, wide, smooth lawns and many 
winding roads. 

“They won’t let us in on account of the war 


i6o The Island of Appledore 

scare,” said one of the boys who had brought 
them, “but we have to turn back here so we 
might as well stop and look through the gate. 
It is the Great Lakes Naval Station, where 
they train the sailors for the warships. Oh, 
look, they’re drilling now!” 

A squad of uniformed sailor boys came 
marching past, very neat with their blue coats, 
their small white hats, their brown legs all 
moving together. They swept by like a great 
perfect machine, minds and bodies all trained 
to act absolutely together for the better ac- 
complishment of a common purpose. They 
moved back and forth across the green, wheel- 
ing, turning, marching and countermarching. 
How hard they must have worked, Billy 
thought, to learn to do it so well, how each one 
must be trying now to do his own part per- 
fectly so that the whole might be perfect. It 
brought back to him a quick memory of the 
night he had witnessed the war game, of the 
early morning when he had watched the ships 
go by and had seen, if only for a moment, what 
the N avy really meant. F rom what port were 
those same ships sailing forth today, to play at 
the new war game; over what seas would they 


The Island of Appledore 161 

be scattered to guard America from a real and 
terrible foe? 

Then, for some reason his mind swept back 
to the other subject upon which he had been 
thinking so deeply, to the camping trip for 
which he should, even now, be making plans. 
At this very moment Otto Bradford would 
probably be coming out of his cabin to take 
the horses down to water, the sun would be 
bright, the thin air very cold, and the moun- 
tains all scarlet and yellow and brown in the 
strange colors that only the Rocky Mountains 
can show. Perhaps it would be so clear that 
you could see the Highlands, that circle of tre- 
mendous peaks beyond the rough brown buttes 
that hemmed the valley in, the high sky line 
that often was not visible for weeks together 
but, on a brilliant day like this, would spring 
suddenly into being, a vast wall of glittering 
white, with jagged summits that seemed to 
touch the very sky. The wind would blow 
down from the snow fields sharp and chill, it 
would lift the manes of the horses as they 
snorted, kicked up their heels and went gal- 
loping off down the trail. It would be good 
to see it all again but — 


162 The Island of Appledore 

The sailors were marching away across the 
wide green. Beyond them, between two 
buildings he could see the lake, rough and 
deep blue on this windy morning, darkened 
here and there by the passing shadows of flying 
clouds. A schooner came into view, beating 
into the wind, first in shadow, then in sun- 
shine, cutting the blue water in a line of foam. 
She was doubtless some worn old tub of awk- 
ward lines and dingy sails, should you see her 
close ; but here, with the stiff breeze to aid her, 
she sped along like a live thing, the bright sun 
changing her sails to silver. If fresh water 
was so blue as that, what would salt water be? 
If this wind could seem so sharp and bracing, 
if Lake Michigan could roll in such waves 
upon the beach, what would it be to feel the 
fresh sea breeze, and to hear the surf come 
thundering in on the shores of Appledore? 

“What are you thinking about so hard, 
Billy?” one of his comrades asked suddenly, 
breaking sharply into his dream. 

Billy drew a long breath, glanced up at the 
clock above the gateway and said, 

“I was wondering how soon we can be get- 
ting back to the hotel. I have to make the 


The Island of Appledore 163 

noon train for Boston. I think I will go East 
instead of West for this vacation.” 

Once he had started on his journey he began 
to realize how truly he had longed to go back. 
The miles seemed to crawl, he stood on the 
platform and counted the white posts and won- 
dered why they did not go by faster. He 
seemed to have been travelling a week by the 
time they reached Albany ; he was utterly worn 
out with impatience when at last they steamed 
into Boston. 

Having an hour or so to wait he went down 
to Atlantic Avenue, just to see the fish markets 
and the rows of schooners lying at the piers, 
to listen to the splash of the rising tide. He 
found the place so fascinating that he nearly 
missed his train, but managed to catch it at the 
last minute, and sped away on the final stage 
of his journey. 

“Rockford?” said the conductor, looking 
at his ticket, “we don’t run as far as that at this 
season of the year. We stop at Piscataqua, 
and there is only one train a day from there 
until the summer rush begins. I don’t think 
you can make connections; you will have to 
stop over.” 


164 The Island of Appledore 

To wait a whole day when he was but a few 
miles from the end of his journey was quite 
out of the question for Billy. He knew that a 
jingling, rattling, two-horse stage plied be- 
tween Piscataqua and Rockford; perhaps he 
could catch that. He found on inquiry that 
he could, that it would start in half an hour. 
In summer one could go by motor, but “it 
ain’t the season” was the only answer he could 
get to all his questions, so that he was forced to 
content himself with Silas Oakley and his 
slow and talkative mode of travel. 

He walked about the streets a little in Pisca- 
taqua and stopped at a bulletin board before 
the newspaper office. It was the Friday 
morning that war was actually declared. 
Billy saw the notice go up as he stood watch- 
ing, but observed very little change in the 
crowd that gathered to read that the last step 
had been taken. People looked a little more 
anxious, perhaps; more than one said, “Well, 
I’m glad the waiting’s over.” That was all. 

At the end of the street he saw two blue- 
jackets standing before the door of a little 
building above which a big flag was flying. 

“That’s the recruiting station,” a passerby 
told him; “they are enlisting men for the 


The Island of Appledore 165 

Navy. It’s going pretty briskly, too, I hear; 
they have almost the authorized number now, 
so they will close the place in a few days. I’m 
glad our town has done so well.” 

Billy walked on down to the corner where 
the stage was to start. He did not yet feel that 
the war was real ; why, it couldn't be real on a 
bright, gay, spring morning, with the church 
bells ringing for Good Friday services, and 
everything looking just the same as it always 
did. It was time for the stage to go, but the 
driver was telling a good story to some friends 
and could not be bothered to hurry himself for 
the three passengers who were waiting. The 
boy bounced about impatiently on the narrow 
seat and thought that the “I says” and “he 
says” and “then I just told him” would never 
come to an end. 

They started at last, and a long, bumpy, 
weary ride it proved to be. The woods on 
each side of them were green and full of flow- 
ers, the little brooks below the bridges were 
brimming full with the spring rains, the birds 
were all singing their best songs, but Billy saw 
only the road before them and heard nothing 
but the squeaking of the wheels and the creak- 
ing of the clumsy old stage. It seemed as 


166 The Island of Appledore 

though the drive and Silas Oakley’s conversa- 
tion would never have an end; but at last both 
were cut short by their arrival at Rockford. 

It was late in the afternoon, just the time for 
the Appledore boat. Billy made a breathless 
dash down to the landing and made it just as 
the gang-plank was being taken in. He 
hardly understood, himself, why he was in 
such haste to be there ; he only knew that his 
longing for the place made it impossible to 
delay a minute. As the boat puffed out of the 
harbour he leaned back in the deck chair, con- 
tent at last, since he*knew that now there were 
no more obstacles between him and his jour- 
ney’s end. 

He was glad to find that it was still light 
when finally the little steamer lay alongside of 
Appledore wharf. He was rather surprised 
to see Johann Happs on the pier, an unfa- 
miliar Johann dressed in best clothes a good 
deal too small for him, and carrying a bat- 
tered old suitcase. 

“Are you going away, Joe?” he asked in sur- 
prise. 

“No — yes — that is, I don’t know,” was 
Johann’s rather startling answer. He had a 
worried, hunted look that troubled Billy. 


The Island of Appledore 167 

Johann walked down to the steamer’s gang- 
way, turned back once, then finally stepped 
resolutely aboard. Yet a little later, when 
Billy looked back over his shoulder at the 
wharf, he saw the boat steaming away and 
Johann sitting on his suitcase gazing after her, 
an odd and forlorn figure. 

“I wonder what’s the matter with him,” 
Billy thought; but he did not have time to 
reflect very deeply upon the matter. He 
could not wait to inquire whether the hotel 
was open; he merely set down his bag and 
sped along the beach path toward Captain 
Saulsby’s point. He could see the red roof 
peeping out among the trees, he could even 
see some one moving in the garden ; therefore 
he could not wait. The crooked old willow 
trees were a mass of new yellow-green, and a 
blackbird sang very loud to him as he hurried 
through the gap in the wall. 

The old sailor was digging in the garden 
when Billy came swinging down the path. 
His pipe and a folded newspaper lay upon 
the bench, he seemed to be working very busily 
and to be talking angrily to himself. He 
greeted Billy as calmly as though they had 
parted only the evening before. 


168 The Island of Appledore 

“Well,” he said, “you’ve come back, have 
you? I thought you would.” 

His smile of welcome was a warm and 
friendly one, but it disappeared almost in- 
stantly. Plainly something was weighing 
very heavily on Captain Saulsby’s mind. 

“Did you bring an evening paper?” he de- 
manded almost at once, and took eagerly the 
one that Billy drew from his pocket. The an- 
nouncement that war had been declared 
blazed in huge headlines across the first page. 

“It’s no surprise,” commented the old man 
as he sat down on the bench to read. He 
growled with impatience because he tried to 
make out the smaller print without his spec- 
tacles, could not manage it, but had to take 
time to search through his pockets, find them 
and set them laboriously on his nose. He 
read greedily for some minutes, then put the 
paper down and sat on gazing moodily out to 
sea. 

“They are recruiting for the Navy over at 
Piscataqua,” Billy remarked at last, merely 
for the sake of saying something. 

“Yes,” answered the Captain; “I was over 
there myself two days ago.” 

“Why, what for?” the boy asked in surprise. 


The Island of Appledore 169 

“What for?” exclaimed the Captain. 
“Why, to enlist of course. And they wouldn’t 
take me; no, the fools wouldn’t take me! 
Here I know every yard and shroud and tim- 
ber in every kind of ship that’s afloat. I’ve 
lived long enough really to learn something — 
and they turned me away. They’re taking 
boys of eighteen, sixteen even, if their parents 
say yes, fellows who have learned about as 
much of ships as they could find out from sail- 
ing chips in a duck-pond. I don’t know what 
our Navy means. Here’s a war coming, and 
a valuable man like me applies — and they 
won’t have him.” 

His outburst was so full of wrath that for a 
moment Billy was awed into silence. But 
even the silence was thunderous with rage, so 
he finally broke it. 

“What are you doing now?” he inquired. 

Captain Saulsby put down the paper and his 
spectacles, rose stiffly and once more grasped 
his spade. 

“I’m planting potatoes,” he said bitterly. 


CHAPTER XI 

THE WATCHFIRES OF APPLEDORE 

It was Easter Sunday and Billy and his 
Aunt were going to church. The day was to 
bring forth strange things, but it began as any 
Sunday might, with bright weather that was 
a little hot, with a pleasant walk up through 
the fields while the bells were ringing, with 
entry into the cool, dim little church and a si- 
lent wait, for Aunt Mattie was one of the 
people who are always early. There was a 
good deal of stiff rustling of the Appledore 
population’s Sunday best, as in twos and threes 
the congregation filed in, fishermen and their 
wives, some more prosperous ones who farmed 
as well as fished, the hotel proprietor, and 
Harvey Jarreth in a suit of very new clothes. 

Billy knew well that one should not look 
around, but he nevertheless turned full about 
to smile a greeting at Sally Shute when she 
came into the pew behind him. Her stiff 
170 


The Island of Appledore 171 

skirts stood out almost straight around her and 
her yellow braids were brushed until they 
shone. He observed that she had grown a lit- 
tle taller since last year, but that her pink 
cheeks were as round as ever and her face as 
earnest. Her father and mother were with 
her, and young J acky, very restless and making 
continual trouble. 

The service began with a prayer that Billy 
sometimes, during idle moments in a long ser- 
mon, had examined curiously in the prayer 
book and wondered if it were ever used. “In 
Time of War and Tumults,” it was headed, 
and reminded him of what for a little time he 
had forgotten, that there was a war. He 
looked out of the window and tried to think of 
it as true, but failed. No, there certainly 
could not be a war, not on such a day as this. 
Then he saw that one of the fishermen’s wives 
was crying quietly behind her pew, yes, and 
there was another over in the corner doing the 
same thing. They had boys who were blue- 
jackets in the Navy, he supposed, and were 
foolish enough to think that something might 
happen to them. On the way up the hill, 
Aunt Mattie had been giving him a little talk 
on history and had pointed out that nearly all 


172 The Island of Appledore 

of our wars began in April. Why in April, 
he wondered, when everything seemed less like 
war then than at any other time of the year. 
He began to think idly of how many Easter 
Sundays there must have been just like this 
one, back, back as far as the Revolution, when 
women bravely put on their best and toiled up 
to the church, only to cry in secret behind the 
pews because there was going to be a war. 
Why— 

His mind was wandering farther and 
farther from the service. Suddenly it was 
brought back by a quick touch upon his arm. 

“Captain Saulsby is in the doorway,” 
whispered Sally Shute behind him. “I think 
he wants you for something.” 

There indeed stood the old sailor in the 
door, looking distressed and uncomfortable 
and peering about as though in search of some 
one. He seemed much relieved when he 
caught Billy’s eye and saw the boy rise to tip- 
toe out. He put a paper into Billy’s hand as 
they went down the path together. 

“I want that telephoned to the telegraph 
office at Rockport,” he said. “I have tried to 
do it myself, but I can’t hear quite well enough 
to make sure they have got it right, and I don’t 


The Island of Appledore 173 

want the hotel clerk to give it for me, or 
he would be telling it all over the Island. I 
hope your Aunt won’t mind it that I called you 
out of the church.” 

Billy read over the message, then, in bewil- 
derment, read it again. 

“Why, Captain Saulsby,” he said, “it doesn’t 
make sense!” 

“I know it,” agreed the Captain, “and I 
don’t quite know what it stands for myself. 
But that naval officer from Piscataqua who 
was out here yesterday told me to send such 
and such a message if this thing or that thing 
happened; he wrote out several to cover dif- 
ferent cases. I suppose he thought I couldn’t 
get a regular cipher code straight. Maybe 
I couldn’t.” 

The day before, Captain Saulsby had had a 
visitor whose coming had seemed both to 
please him and to make him feel important. 
An officer from one of the warships lying in 
the harbour of Piscataqua had come all the 
way to Appledore to see him. At first the old 
man had announced that he would speak to no 
officer unless he came to apologize for the 
Navy’s refusal of its best recruit; but he had 
finally changed his mind and had held a long 


174 The Island of Appledore 

and earnest talk with his guest in the garden. 

“There’s a use for old men after all, if they 
just know something,” he said mysteriously to 
Billy that evening, and had seemed so cheered 
that he could even speak of potato-planting 
without bitterness. 

Billy went into the hotel’s telephone booth 
and sent the message, spelling out each word 
laboriously, since the girl operator at the other 
end was not used to taking code messages and 
seemed much annoyed at the lack of meaning. 

“I can’t waste my time sending such non- 
sense,” was her first tart comment, and it re- 
quired much persuasion to make her believe 
that all was as it should be. 

When he had finished with Captain 
Saulsby’s message, he proceeded to send an- 
other on his own account. It was a cablegram 
to his father, asking if he would give his con- 
sent, should Billy wish to enlist in the Navy. 

“If there is going to be a real war I might 
want to go in by and by,” he reflected. “It 
will take two months to get a letter answered, 
so I may as well ask this way. I’m afraid he 
won’t say yes. If I were eighteen I wouldn’t 
have to ask him. But once it is done I know 
he and mother wouldn’t object.” 


The Island of Appledore 175 

It took some little time to get this dispatch 
off, as he had first to go up to his room to look 
up the address. His father had left his 
mother in Lima and had gone up to some little 
mining town in the Andes, where the Spanish 
names were of the most unpronounceable kind. 
The operator’s short temper was quite ex- 
hausted when at last she had got it all. 

“When you think up anything new, let me 
know,” was her acid farewell as she rang off. 

Captain Saulsby had grown tired of waiting 
and had walked back to his cottage. Billy 
found him at the foot of the garden, staring out 
to sea through the binoculars that had been one 
of the trophies of their adventure at the mill. 

“Nice glasses that German fellow left us,” 
the old sailor remarked as he lowered them to 
change the focus. Then he added more 
slowly, “I shouldn’t wonder if he would be 
coming back for them one of these days.” 

“Why, how can you think that?” cried Billy 
astonished. 

“Well,” the Captain returned reflectively, 
“there’s Harvey Jarreth now. He has been 
sporting a lot of new clothes lately and has 
been getting money from somebody. There is 
no person about here complaining that Harvey 


176 The Island of Appledore 

has cheated him, so it must be coming from 
outside. He is bound that he will prove yet 
that he wasn’t fooled in that affair last sum- 
mer, and we can’t tell just how far that folly 
will take him. There are other things, too, 
big and little, down to foot-tracks in my po- 
tato patch. But the last one is that yacht out 
there; she has gone by the Island three times 
already today, and I don’t like her looks. She 
may belong to some harmless, dirt-common 
millionaire, and then she may not. I know all 
of that kind of vessel that sails in these waters 
and she’s a new one to me.” 

He adjusted the glass again and looked long 
at the moving speck and the wreath of smoke 
that trailed across the sea. 

“I don’t like her,” he repeated, shaking his 
head, “and I’ve sent a message to that officer 
telling him so.” 

Billy had a look at the vessel also, but could 
make nothing of her. To him she might have 
been any one of a thousand pleasure boats that 
plied those seas in summer time. 

“Well, there is nothing to do but wait,” the 
Captain said at last, as the yacht disappeared 
and he closed the glasses into their case with a 
snap. 


The Island of Appledore 177 

Wait they did through the length of a hot, 
sultry day. Aunt Mattie’s friendship for the 
Captain was even great enough to secure her 
forgiveness for his having called Billy out of 
church. The boy was sent up to the hotel with 
a great bunch of spring flowers as a peace 
offering, but, having delivered them, he went 
back to the cottage once more to spend the 
slow hours sitting on Captain Saulsby’s door- 
step or walking restlessly up and down the 
garden. 

What he was expecting, or what Captain 
Saulsby expected, he did not know at all; but 
whatever the possibilities were, for long hours 
nothing occurred. The sun disappeared un- 
der a cloud, the atmosphere grew hotter and 
heavier: it was plain that a storm was coming, 
although as yet there was no wind. Far out to 
sea the big bell-buoy was rocking in the un- 
easy swells, and ringing fitfully. The time 
passed, the afternoon darkened to twilight, the 
sun emerged a moment, then went down in a 
blaze of angry, coppery red, but still nothing 
happened. Perhaps Captain Saulsby had 
been quite mistaken. 

It had grown quite dark and the church 
bells were ringing again for the evening serv- 


178 The Island of Appledore 

ice, but Billy was still sitting before Captain 
Saulsby’s door. Quick steps — they could be 
no other than Sally Shute’s — came across the 
garden, and the little girl stepped out of the 
dark and sat down beside him. 

“Mother and Jacky have gone to church,” 
she said, “but I came over here to see the Cap- 
tain. Is he sick again, or anything? Is 
something wrong?” 

“No,” returned Billy with an effort, “No, 
nothing’s wrong.” 

Even if he had felt free to tell her, he could 
hardly have explained what was amiss. A 
heavy feeling in the air, a queer thrill inside 
him, a vague sensation that something big, too 
big to understand, was about to happen : could 
one call that “something wrong”? Billy 
hardly thought so and therefore kept silent. 

Sally moved about uneasily for a little 
while, got up, seated herself again, then finally 
jumped up once more. 

“I can’t keep still, Billy Wentworth, and no 
more can you,” she announced. “Let’s go 
down on the beach.” 

They went down over the sparse sea-grass, 
across the smooth water-worn rocks to the 
beach, left hard and wet by the receding tide. 


The Island of Appledore 179 

For a short time they walked on the sand with- 
out speaking. The winter storms had washed 
up quantities of driftwood that now lay, dry 
and bleached white, in tumbled heaps here and 
there above high water mark. The two sat 
down by one of them at last, when they became 
weary of tramping up and down. Suddenly 
Sally lifted her head to listen. 

“Why does the bell-buoy ring louder?” she 
questioned. 

It was true that the far-off clanging voice 
sounded clearer, all at once; it rang loud and 
steady through the quiet night for a moment, 
then dropped again to the faint, intermittent 
“clang-clang-clang,” to which Billy had lis- 
tened all the afternoon. 

“What could ring it like that?” he was ask- 
ing himself, but even while he was so thinking 
the answer came to him. The waves of a pass- 
ing steamer would rock the buoy for just that 
length of time, setting it to calling louder 
through the windless silence. They sat wait- 
ing and by and by heard a sharp swish, swish, 
as a succession of heavier swells broke upon 
the sandy beach. Yes, it must have been a 
steamer, coming close in, under cover of the 
dark. What was she? The shore boat? 


180 The Island of Appledore 

No, that had been lying at the wharf for an 
hour. The Boston steamer? That was not 
yet running. Could she be a certain white 
yacht of clean-cut, racing lines, the one that 
had slipped by Appledore in the fog, that 
night of the adventure at the mill, the one that 
had passed the Island three times already that 
day? 

“I think I had better tell Captain Saulsby,” 
Billy said. 

He had not far to go, for he met the old 
sailor stumbling his way through the dark 
half-way down the path. Even his dull old 
ears had heard the change in the bell-buoy’s 
voice, and he had come in such haste that he 
still carried his lighted pipe in one hand and 
the bundle of papers he had been reading in 
the other. 

“Did you see anything? Did you hear any- 
thing?” he demanded as Billy came to his side. 
Before the boy could answer, Sally’s quick feet 
came pattering behind him. 

“There is a boat,” she cried. “I heard 
oars! Oh, come quickly.” 

When, however, they all three arrived upon 
the beach there was nothing to be heard except 
ripples lapping quietly against the sand. A 


The Island of Appledore 1 8 1 

little breeze had arisen, but here, inside the 
point, the water was still very smooth. Over 
to the right they could see the lights of the 
hotel; beyond, a little further around the 
curve of the bay, the clustered, twinkling 
lamps of the village. Above, on the hill, 
Billy could see the shining pointed windows of 
the little church and could even distinguish 
the sound of a hymn tune that came drifting 
down to them. But here upon the shore all 
was utterly silent, while no amount of peering 
through the blind dark could give any clue as 
to what manner of ship might be swinging at 
her anchor out yonder in the tide. Sally as- 
sured them in excited whispers that she could 
not have been mistaken, but the old Captain 
made no reply, as he alternately puffed fiercely 
upon his pipe or let it go out. He had just 
pulled out his match box to relight it for the 
third time when Billy touched his arm. 

“I hear it,” he whispered. “Listen.” 

The monotonous creak of rowlocks was 
plainly to be heard now, and the quiet dip and 
splash of oars as they rose and fell. 

“But — but — they are coming from over 
toward the village: they are going past us,” 
Sally exclaimed. “What can that mean?” 


182 The Island of Appledore 

It was puzzlingly true that the sound 
seemed to be moving parallel to the shore and 
was beginning to pass them. What was even 
more bewildering was that suddenly the dip- 
ping oars stopped entirely and there came 
across the water the sound of low voices, more 
than one speaking at a time, as though in 
heated argument. The three looked at each 
other in mystified astonishment. 

“I think — ” began Sally but never got any 
further. A voice rose suddenly out of the 
darkness, a man’s voice, but shouting so loud 
and high that it was almost a scream. 

“No,” they heard. “No, no, I will not go !” 

There arose a tumult of oaths, of confused, 
angry words; there was a noise of oars crack- 
ing together, then a mighty splash. Billy and 
Sally Shute ran down the beach with Captain 
Saulsby vainly trying to follow as quickly. 

“I know that voice,” cried Sally, then lifted 
her own to its utmost strength to call valiantly 
through the dark. 

“Johann, Johann Happs,” she shouted with 
all her might, then again, “Johann, Johann; 
we are here.” 

Something darker than the dark water 


The Island of Appledore 183 

emerged suddenly into their sight, somebody 
plunged through the shallow breakers and fell 
gasping on the beach. In a moment the tall, 
sprawling figure was up and running through 
the sand toward Captain Saulsby. It was in- 
deed Johann, trembling, breathless, sobbing, 
his face like chalk and his eyes burning. 

“Captain Saulsby,” he cried, then stum- 
bling, dropped on his knees in the sand. He 
clung to the old man’s coat crying out again 
and again, “I will not go, I will not go.” 

In a moment of quiet they heard the oars 
dipping again as the boat followed him in 
shore. 

“Don’t let them take me away,” cried 
Johann wildly. They all stared at each other 
and at the vague shape moving toward them 
through the dark. What was to be done? 

It was Billy who, in that extremity, had a 
sudden inspiration. He had trodden on the 
Captain’s match box in the sand and had per- 
haps caught his idea from that. In a second 
he had run to the nearest heap of driftwood, 
had struck a match and kindled a little strug- 
gling flame. 

“Quick, Sally,” he directed, “take these and 


184 The Island of Appledore 

those papers, go light the other piles down 
toward the point. They won’t dare land 
where it is light.” 

He blew upon the blaze until the sparks 
flew and the rapid flame ran through the dry 
fuel. Higher and higher the red beacon 
arose, until it shone out over the water and 
showed the boat, slowly backing away into the 
dark to seek another landing place. Billy ran 
to another driftwood heap, glancing over his 
shoulder to see that Sally had successfully 
started hers and was hastening on to kindle 
others. The whole beach was lit by the red 
glare, the crests of the little waves caught and 
reflected the glow as they came running in, 
while, with the lighted circle spreading 
farther and farther out over the water, the boat 
drew back more and more to keep in the shel- 
tering darkness. Johann Happs’ tall figure 
and Captain Saulsby’s huge, bent one looked 
gigantic against the crimson light, with their 
moving shadows trailing down to the water’s 
edge. 

The services were over in the little church, 
and the congregation, seeing the line of flame 
along the shore, came trooping down to see 
what it could mean. Once having caught an 


The Island of Appledore 185 

idea of the situation, every one went to work to 
give assistance. The guardian fires spread 
farther and farther — all around the harbour, 
across the point and beyond the mill-stream 
cove. Children ran to and fro like ants, gath- 
ering fuel; the crackling driftwood burned 
blue and green and golden, lifting high flames 
to signal defiance to the enemy. 

Scorched, smoke-begrimed, weary with toil 
and excitement, Billy and Sally Shute at last 
made their way back to where Johann and 
Captain Saulsby were still talking. A little 
group had gathered about them, but of these 
Johann scarcely seemed aware, so intent was he 
upon what he was saying. 

“And they keep telling me always that I 
must work for the Fatherland here, or go back 
to aid her at 'home,” he was saying as Billy 
came close. “But I answered that this was 
my Fatherland and I had no other. Yet they 
keep repeating that a man can have but one, 
and if it is once Germany so must it always be 
Germany.” 

“But you were born here,” said the old 
sailor, “and your father was banished from his 
own country.” 

“Yes, he was driven out, but he longed al- 


1 86 The Island of Appledore 

ways to return, perhaps because he knew he 
never could. He wished that I should go 
back there to live after he died; I did go, but 
it was only for a year.” 

“Didn’t you like it, Joe?” asked one of the 
fishermen lightly. 

Johann regarded him with solemn, earnest 
eyes. 

“I thought at first I would like it,” he 
answered. “The order appealed to me, and 
the lack of waste and the doing everything so 
well. But in a little I saw that it was too well 
done, too perfect. Does Nature never waste? 
Did the dear Gott make us perfect? No, but 
they try to think they can make you so in Ger- 
many.” He was silent a moment, then his last 
words broke from him almost with a cry. 
“To be perfect you must be a thing — not a 
man. And in Germany they would make you 
a thing, they would break your heart, they 
would trample on your soul !” 

“And they have been over here trying to get 
you to help them?” the old Captain questioned 
gently. 

“Yes, they keep saying do this, or do that; it 
is for the Fatherland. ‘That lighthouse, 
should an accident happen there and some of 


The Island of Appledore 187 

the ships go on the rocks, it will be so many less 
against the Fatherland.’ Or, That wireless 
station at Rockford, it is working to our harm ; 
help to destroy it for the Fatherland.’ I sunk 
my boat that they might no longer try to send 
me on their errands. I have tried to flee from 
Appledore, but I could not go, there are my 
little house and my good friends here, and the 
wide blue sea that I love so much. Then at 
last it came to their saying that if I have not 
the spirit to help them here I must go back 
and fight for Germany. I thought and 
thought, night and day I had nothing else in 
my unhappy mind, and at last, partly because 
I thought it was my duty, partly because I 
was afraid, I said I would go.” 

Billy looked at Johann and thought of those 
mild blue eyes of his being ordered to look 
with approval on the sights of this most ter- 
rible of wars, thought of his gentle, capable 
hands being set to the burning and pillaging 
of stricken Belgium. He shuddered. 

“I believed they had bruised my spirit until 
there was no more life in it,” Johann went on, 
“but when they came for me tonight, when we 
passed the point and I saw the lights of Cap- 
tain Saulsby’s cottage, when I thought of fight- 


1 88 The Island of Appledore 

ing against his country and that of all the 
friends I loved, why then I could not go. I 
jumped overboard and swam ashore; this lit- 
tle girl’s brave voice showed me the way; this 
boy’s quick wit prevented my enemies from 
following me, and here I am.” 

So absorbed had Billy been, that it was not 
until Sally nudged him, that he observed the 
last addition to Johann’s group of listeners. 
Then he saw a little, bedraggled man, hatless 
and blackened with the charcoal of the fires 
they had been tending. He did not realize 
who it was until the men about them parted, 
leaving the newcomer face to face with Cap- 
tain Saulsby. 

“Harvey Jarreth,” the old sailor said, “are 
you still trying to pass yourself off as a fit com- 
panion for honest men? That friend of yours 
is out there on the yacht; this boy Johann is 
too good to go with him, but you are not. 
You had better join them out there, Harvey; 
there is nothing left here for you. No one 
will ever trust or respect you again; you will 
probably be in jail in another hour if you stay. 
There are plenty of men here will offer you 
a boat, just to get rid of you. You had better 
go to your friends, Harvey.” 


The Island of Appledore 189 

Jarreth received the Captain’s words in 
unprotesting silence. He seemed to be think- 
ing very deeply, and of unhappy things, but 
when he spoke at last it was with a queer 
twisted smile. % 

“I don’t believe I’ll go, Ned,” he answered, 
“no matter what comes to me here. I am cer- 
tainly the biggest fool in the United States, 
and perhaps the biggest rascal ; but after all I 
am in the United States and I think I will stay 
there. He has gone beyond anything I ever 
bargained for, that friend of mine; he has 
made a monkey of me just the way you said, 
and I am glad to know it at last. Yes, I guess 
I will stay. I would rather go to jail than to 
Germany.” 

He pulled a roll of papers out of his pocket, 
turned them over once or twice and then tore 
them across. 

“I always said it was criminal, the way you 
looked after your affairs, Ned Saulsby,” he 
went on, “and I had got a clear title to most 
of your land; these were the proofs.” He 
tossed the torn papers into the nearest fire 
where they burst into flame. 

“I’d kind of like to go to jail,” he concluded 
at last, with a tremor in his once arrogant 


190 The Island of Appledore 

voice. “I believe it would make me feel bet- 
ter about having been such a fool. Tell any 
one who wants me that I’ll be waiting at my 
house.” 

Without another word he turned in the 
flickering firelight, and trudged slowly away 
through the heavy sand. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE LAST VOYAGE OF JOHANN HAPPS 

There was a story, one which Billy had 
often heard Captain Saulsby tell, of a ship 
that had driven on the rocks outside the har- 
bour of Appledore during one of the terrible 
winter tempests. No boat could hope to reach 
her, so gigantic were the seas, and the crew 
had clung in her rigging all night, waiting for 
the wind to fall and help to come. The fish- 
erfolk of the village had gathered on the 
shore, had built fires to signal to the desperate 
sailors that friends were watching and ready 
to give aid, and had tended their beacons all 
night long, so that some spark of hope might 
still live in the hearts of the drowning men. 
When morning broke and the wind went 
down, they were all rescued, “seventeen men 
and the ship’s cat.” 

Appledore saw a similar scene tonight, with 
the long red line of signal fires blazing the 
length of the beach, and with every man and 


/ 


192 The Island of Appledore 

woman toiling to keep them burning. Yet it 
was not to friends they were signalling this 
time, but foes ; to a lurking, treacherous enemy 
whose one safety lay in secrecy and darkness, 
and who read the message of defiance and 
drew off silently into the night. 

Hour after hour passed, the wind rose 
higher and higher, sweeping great clouds of 
smoke and sparks along the beach. The tide 
came in and the seas rose, until even the har- 
bour became a circle of tossing waves and 
thundering breakers. 

“They’ll not be trying to send any boats 
ashore now,” one of the fishermen said to Cap- 
tain Saulsby. “I think Joe Happs is safe 
enough from any danger of their coming after 
him.” 

The Captain nodded gravely as he sat there 
on the sand. 

“I believe you can let the fires go out,” he 
said, “and you have surely done a good deed 
for Johann this night. He would thank you 
if he could, but it is pretty plain that just now 
he can’t. I wonder what he is going to do.” 

The people went away homeward one by 
one, the fires burned down to heaps of blazing 
coals, the surf came roaring in, higher and 


The Island of Appledore 193 

higher as the wind and tide rose together, and 
the call of Appledore sounded deep and loud 
through all the growing tumult. Long ago 
Sally Shute had been dragged away to her bed, 
protesting loudly, but led by a determined 
mother, Johann Happs had wandered aim- 
lessly off in the direction of his little house, so 
that only Billy and Captain Saulsby were left 
still sitting on the sand. The old man could 
not be persuaded to go home, nor would Billy 
leave him. After some time Johann reap- 
peared again, coming silently out of the dark 
and seating himself beside them without a 
word. The three said very little for a time, as 
the Captain’s thoughts seemed to be busy with 
the past, Johann’s to be bent on the problem 
of his future, while Billy’s whirling wits were 
trying to cope with the present. Where was 
the yacht? What was she doing? Were 
German eyes still fixed upon their fires in the 
dark? Would morning bring some bigger ad- 
venture, or would it show an empty harbour 
and that victory was with the watchers of Ap- 
pledore? 

The night wore past, the blackness faded to 
grey, by slow, slow creeping hours the morn- 
ing came. Captain Saulsby seemed to know 


194 The Island of Appledore 

just the moment when it was light enough for 
observation, for he pulled the glasses from his 
pocket, adjusted them, and looked long and 
earnestly out to sea. Then he handed them 
to Billy. 

“Sight straight across the point,” he di- 
rected, “above that scrub pine. What do you 
make of it?” 

Billy looked and gave an unrestrained shout 
of joy. Within the dancing field of the glasses 
he could see the big, white yacht plunging 
through the heavy seas, while on either side 
and just ahead of her three dark vessels were 
swiftly drawing in. 

“I wondered why they were so slow there 
at the Naval Station when I sent my message,” 
remarked the Captain. “I see now that they 
were taking no chances, but were seeing to it 
the yacht was headed off this time. Hark!” 

The wind had shifted and was blowing hard 
in shore. It carried to them a faint sound — 
“boom,” and then again — “boom.” 

“They are firing on her,” shouted Billy, 
dancing up and down with excitement. 
Johann had the glasses now, and was looking 
through them intently. 


The Island of Appledore 195 

“She is lying to,” he said quietly at last. 
“She sees she can’t make it.” 

“No? Give me that glass.” Captain 
Saulsby fairly snatched it out of his hand. 
“Well, it’s true,” he went on after watching 
the vessels for a moment. “She hasn’t even 
the spirit to get herself respectably sunk. 
They’ll bring her into port, I suppose, and put 
the whole lot in jail. Harvey Jarreth will be 
glad to see them.” 

He got up slowly and stiffly. 

“I guess the show is over,” he said, “and I, 
for one, begin to remember that there is such 
a thing in the world as sleep. We ought all 
of us to turn in. Johann Happs, you look like 
a ghost, man ; you should be taking some rest. 
When those rascals are brought up in court, 
the authorities will be needing your evidence. 
You must get yourself pulled together some- 
how.” 

“Yes — yes, I will go home at once.” 

Billy thought that Johann seemed to be pay- 
ing very little attention even to his own words, 
but he said nothing. He was weary himself, 
yet still too excited to feel sleepy. Johann 
left them at Captain Saulsby’s door, but Billy 


196 The Island of Appledore 

went inside and remained to help the old man 
prepare a breakfast of bacon and coffee, which 
tasted most delicious and was badly needed by 
both of them. 

It was still very early, with the sun only just 
coming up when he started homeward. He 
had borrowed the binoculars and went first 
down to the point, hoping to have another 
view of the captured yacht. The wind was 
blowing fiercer and fiercer, and the spray 
dashing up in columns between the rocks. 
The yacht and two of her captors had disap- 
peared, it was plain that they had made for 
some port other than Rockford. The .third 
ship, however, was headed in his direction, 
probably planning to make for Rockford or 
possibly Piscataqua. She passed so close that 
Billy could see, through the glass, as plainly as 
though he were alongside, her wave-swept 
deck, her weary wind-buffeted crew, even the 
worn faces of the officers on her bridge. 

They had had a night of it, just as he had, 
but he was going to rest and to recover himself 
in peace and ease, while they had probably 
another day and night of just such toil and 
watching before them, and another, and an- 
other. That was what war was ! No gather- 


The Island of Appledore 197 

ing of great fleets for battle, no spectacular 
deeds of glory, no frequent chances for the 
winning of undying fame. It was to be hard 
work, unwearying vigilance, dull days of pa- 
trolling and long, long nights of watching. 
So America was to be guarded, so her Allies 
were to be given aid. It would take many 
men to do it, and each last one must bear his 
full part. He went back along the point and 
up the beach path, thinking deeply. 

What was his surprise on seeing Johann 
Happs again; he who should have been at 
home sleeping was, instead, hurrying toward 
the wharf with a bundle under his arm. 
When Billy called to him he did not stop, 
merely hastened on the faster. Finally, how- 
ever, Billy’s flying feet overtook him, the boy’s 
hand was laid upon his arm and he was forced 
to turn about. 

“Oh, it’s you!” he exclaimed in evident re- 
lief, “I thought it might be some one else.” 
He fumbled in his pocket. “The hotel clerk 
had this message for you; I told him I would 
deliver it and had almost forgotten all about 
it.” 

He drew out an envelope and handed it to 
Billy. It was a cablegram, the answer to the 


198 The Island of Appledore 

dispatch he had sent to his father the morning 
before. He held the paper with difficulty in 
the wind and finally managed to read its con- 
tents. 

“Give consent reluctantly,” it ran. 

When he had cabled he had thought of en- 
listing only as a distant possibility, now, with 
the permission in his hand, with the vivid im- 
pression still in his mind of what the naval 
service stood for, he felt the desire surge up 
within him to enlist now, without a moment’s 
delay. 

“Father may cable again to say I can’t,” he 
reflected as he stood there, buffeted by the 
wind. “They are so far away, he and mother 
might not understand how things really are. 
If I can send a message saying I have applied, 
before they can send word to me again, that 
I know would settle it. It would take 
months to get my father’s signature to the 
papers giving consent, but he could cable au- 
thority to some one to sign for him. The 
great thing is to hurry.” 

Where was the nearest recruiting office, he 
began to wonder. Certainly not on Apple- 
dore Island, no, nor even at Rockford. The 
nearest was at Piscataqua and — wait, what was 


The Island of Appledore 199 

it they had told him there? That the num- 
ber was nearly full and that probably the place 
would be closed in a day or two. In that 
case he might have to go to Boston; there 
would be delay, it might be too late. 

“Johann,” he asked, suddenly coming down 
to earth and calling to his companion who had 
begun to move off down to the wharf, “Johann, 
where are you going?” 

“I am going over to the mainland,” returned 
Johann, turning around and bending back- 
ward against the wind that caught him with 
full force where he stood. 

“Then wait,” said Billy; “I am going with 
you. When does the boat start?” 

“She is not going out today, the wind is too 
bad,” was the reply. “I have just been to ask 
her captain.” 

Then how are you going?” asked Billy, 
“and, Johann — why do you go?” 

The lad looked down, shuffled his feet un- 
easily and seemed at a loss for an answer. 

“And when are you coming back?” Billy 
pursued. “Tell me, I must know.” 

“I am never coming back,” Johann broke 
forth with sudden vehemence. “Do you not 
see, can you not understand? Those Germans 


200 The Island of Appledore 

they are bringing in will be tried and I will 
have to testify. Every one will hear of it, will 
know how Johann Happs, of Appledore, let 
them tempt him, let them try to drive him, 
nearly let them carry him away to fight for 
Germany. Will any person ever trust me 
again, think you? When I wish to serve my 
country, my own country, and offer myself, 
will they not say, ‘Ah, you are Johann Happs; 
no, no, we take no such men as you.’ So I am 
going away to lose myself, to change my name, 
to be an American with no memory of what 
my father was. Those men who are to be 
tried will be convicted anyway. Harvey Jar- 
reth, Captain Saulsby, you, can all give evi- 
dence enough for that. There will be no need 
for Johann Happs, so he is going to vanish 
forever.” 

“I could stop you,” said Billy slowly. “I 
ought to stop you. Do you think I ought to, 
Johann?” 

“I have been weak and a coward,” the other 
replied, “but somehow in this night I have 
learned to be a man. Would you rob me of 
my chance to prove it? Will you not believe 
in me and let me go?” 


The Island of Appledore 201 

Billy thought harder for a moment than he 
had ever thought in his life before. 

“Yes, I believe in you,” he said at last. 
“And if you are going I am going too. But 
how will we cross?” 

“I have arranged with Sanderson to let me 
have his boat,” returned Johann. “I own a 
half interest, so if I sink her I will not be 
doing wrong. But you should not go with 
me.” He looked at the storm-tossed harbour 
and the angry sea outside. “No,” he finished 
mildly, “it would not be wise.” 

“If you can, I can,” was Billy’s decree. 
“Wait two seconds while I get my things.” 

He dashed wildly up to the hotel and was 
back again almost before Johann had loosed 
the dory that was to carry them out to Sander- 
son’s boat. The rocking and pitching were 
so great that it was difficult to embark, but 
Johann had managed it and Billy was just 
preparing to follow, when a firm hand took 
him by the arm. 

“What are you two boys doing, starting a 
suicide club?” growled Captain Saulsby’s 
voice in his ear. 

Billy turned quickly. 


202 The Island of Appledore 

“You can’t keep us,” he exclaimed desper- 
ately; “you needn’t try.” 

“I’ll hear first where you are going, thank 
you,” returned the Captain, “though to be 
going anywhere with such a wind coming, is 
rank lunacy.” 

As briefly and as earnestly as he could, Billy 
explained their respective errands and the 
need of both of them for haste. More than 
once he had to shout to make himself heard 
above wind and water. 

“I’ve got to enlist,” he ended; “to delay 
now miay mean waiting months. And it 
takes a long time to train a good sailor; I 
must begin now! I must! And you need 
not say anything, because we are both bound 
to go.” 

“Well, I’m not saying anything, am I?” the 
old sailor answered. Then he bent forward 
and spoke close to Billy’s ear to make abso- 
lutely certain of being heard. “I wouldn’t 
stop any one’s going into the Navy, surely not 
at a time like this. But if you go in at the 
bottom, remember the mistake I made and, 
for all you are worth, aim at the top. And 
when you get to be something big, that every 
one salutes and says ‘sir’ to, why, you might 



“Would you believe it, there were two boys that put to sea 

right in the face of it?” 



The Island of Appledore 203 

remember once in a while that it was old Ned 
Saulsby of Appledore Island that launched 
you. That is all, only — only — God bless 
you.” 

He actually took Billy’s arm and pushed 
him toward the boat. “There is no one but 
Johann Happs would stand a chance of get- 
ting across in the face of such a storm,” 
he added, “but I believe he can make it. I 
will explain to your Aunt. Now drop in the 
tender, and I will push you off.” 

People tell on Appledore Island today, and 
will tell for many a year to come, of the great 
storm of April, nineteen seventeen. They will 
show you just how far up the shore the waves 
broke at high tide; they will tell you the 
maximum velocity of the wind, and will point 
out the broken wreckage of two fishing boats 
that dragged their anchors and were thrown 
upon the beach. And they will always end 
by saying — 

“And would you believe it, there were two 
boys that put out to sea right in the face of it? 
Boys, mind you, and one of them not born and 
bred to sailing a boat. A little craft, they 
had, too; Sanderson’s Echo ; you can see her 
at anchor over yonder by the wharf.” 


204 The Island of Appledore 

Only the utter recklessness of two headlong 
boys could have conceived such an expedition ; 
only the almost uncanny skill of one and the 
blind obedience of the other could ever have 
carried it through. Billy, who did not yet 
know all that there was to be learned of sail- 
ing, could still realize that never had he seen a 
boat handled as was the little Echo with 
Johann Happs at the helm. He himself made 
a better assistant than he had on the day 
when he and Captain Saulsby capsized; he 
knew what to do when he could help, and 
how to keep out of the way when he could 
not. 

The harbour of Appledore faced the open 
sea, so that it seemed more than once that the 
furious wind must blow them back upon the 
beach or dash them against the rocks as they 
sought to clear the point. Then they were 
past it at last, and flying before the wind to- 
ward the distant shore. Billy had one last 
glimpse of the Island as they rose on the crest 
of a wave, then a curtain of rain descended and 
blotted it from his sight. Yet even above the 
wind he could hear the strange, deep hum- 
ming voice of Appledore calling aloud to 
speed them on their way. 


The Island of Appledore 205 

“This wind is nothing to what is coming,” 
Johann shouted. 

Except for this remark and for the orders 
he issued from time to time, he scarcely 
spoke throughout their long and perilous 
voyage. White-faced, determined, with eyes 
that seemed to be seeing far visions, rather 
than the hungry seas about him, he stood at 
the tiller and, by main strength of will it 
seemed, drove the little boat upon her course. 
To Billy it appeared that at any moment one 
of the vast, green mountains of water that ran 
beside, must sweep in upon them with its over- 
whelming flood, but always the boat lifted 
just in time and slipped over the crests in 
safety. 

He crouched in the bottom, drenched, shiv- 
ering, blinded by the flying spray, thinking 
of nothing but Johann’s next order and 
whether he could carry it out. Dimly he 
realized that the wind shrieked ever louder 
through the rigging, that the great waves were 
becoming greater, that the squalls of rain 
were sharper and more frequent. Yet he 
never doubted the outcome; he felt certain 
that Johann’s skill would not fail them, that 
the wind might roar as it pleased, and the 


206 The Island of Appledore 

threatening waves rise as high as they willed, 
that it all would bring them only the more 
swiftly to the desired haven. 

There was no way of telling how long their 
voyage lasted. Sometimes it seemed to Billy 
that it was only a few minutes since they had 
set out, and he strained his ears to hear if 
Appledore were calling still. Sometimes it 
seemed that they had been sailing for days and 
that they must go on forever, soaked, dazed, 
worn out to the utmost, but determined still. 

A dim grey shape loomed up through the 
rain at their right hand. 

“ Andrew’s Point,” announced Johann 
tersely. Billy felt an almost imperceptible 
change, the wind struck them a shade less 
fiercely, the seas were not so heavy, their speed 
began to slacken. Johann spoke suddenly 
once more as a dark line showed vaguely be- 
fore them. 

“That’s Rockford breakwater,” he said. 
“We’re nearly in.” Then — “Here, take her, 
Billy; I’m done!” 

He collapsed all at once, sinking to his 
knees, yet managing somehow to steady the 
tiller until Billy’s hand fell upon it. Then, 
with a queer, gentle sigh, he dropped upon 


The Island of Appledore 207 

his face and lay inert, thrown to and fro as the 
boat pitched, while the water they had shipped 
washed back and forth over him. Billy could 
do nothing to aid him, for all his attention 
and all of his strength were needed to handle 
the plunging boat. How had Johann ever 
stood it so long he wondered, out there in the 
gale where it seemed, now, that it was only by 
a miracle they had lived at all? Could he 
manage to round the breakwater unassisted? 
He felt that he could not possibly do it, but 
that he must. 

It was accomplished at last and they were 
in nearly quiet water, speeding toward the 
wharf. Three members of the Life-Saving 
Crew, who had been watching from the pier, 
came rowing out to meet them and showed 
Billy where he could pick up a mooring and 
make the Echo fast. 

“I thought it was boys!” ejaculated one 
when first they came alongside. “There’s no 
grown man would be fool enough to cross 
over from Appledore Island in such weather, 
and you didn’t get in one second too soon. 
The way the wind is now off Andrew’s 
Point, no boat like yours could last five min- 
utes.” 


208 The Island of Appledore 

They lifted Johann into their dory and 
brought the two boys ashore. 

“He’ll be all right in a bit when he’s got 
dry and warm again,” said one of the men, 
“and as for you, young skipper, you are not 
in a much better state yourself.” 

“I’m not the skipper,” explained Billy 
quickly. “It was he that sailed her all the 
way over, and only gave out when we got to 
the breakwater. I don’t think any one else 
on earth could have put us across. If you 
will take care of him a little I will be so thank- 
ful. I have to go on.” 

“In that state?” the man exclaimed, but 
Billy could not be persuaded to wait. His 
water-soaked watch had stopped, but a clock 
in one of Rockford’s steeples was striking the 
hour. 

“I can only just make the Piscataqua train,” 
he said. “Telephone back to Appledore, 
won’t you please, that we are safe. No, don’t 
stop me, I have to go.” 

Johann had opened his eyes and now man- 
aged to hold out a wet hand to say farewell. 

“You’ll never see Johann Happs again,” he 
whispered weakly, but even under his breath 
the tone was joyous. He was to live to forget 


The Island of Appledore 209 

his weakness and his mistakes, Billy knew, 
and, under some other name, to become a firm 
and loyal American. 

It was not until he had climbed aboard the 
jerky, bumpy little train, that he realized 
what a plight he was in. Water dripped from 
his clothes and splashed in his shoes, his hair 
was wet, he had lost his hat. There were not 
many passengers on the Piscataqua accommo- 
dation, but what few there were stared at him 
unceasingly and discussed him in whispers 
through the whole period of the journey. 

Every farmhouse, every crossroads, seemed 
to be a stopping place for this especial train; 
precious minutes were wasted that began to 
grow into precious hours. 

“Suppose the recruiting place is closed,” he 
kept thinking. “Suppose they are closing it 
now! Suppose the last man they need is just 
applying and the officer in charge is saying, 
‘Shut the doors!’ ” 

They bumped to a stop at Clifford’s Junc- 
tion, three miles from Piscataqua and waited 
ten minutes — fifteen — twenty. 

“How long is this going to last?” Billy 
finally appealed to the brakeman. 

“We’ve got to wait here for the Boston 


210 The Island of Appledore 

train and she’s an hour late,” was the easy re- 
ply. “Don’t fuss, young man, she’ll be along 
by and by.” 

“I’ll walk,” returned Billy, and flung him- 
self down the steps. 

There was no town at the Junction, no place 
where a conveyance was to be had, so walk 
Billy did. The road was rough and rutty, 
it seemed eternally climbing up hills and 
never going down them; the distance seemed 
thirty miles instead of three. The rain clouds 
cleared and the sun came out, hot and steam- 
ing, to beat mercilessly upon his uncovered 
head. His shoes were heavy and stiff from 
their salt-water soaking, there was salt, too, in 
his hair, his eyes and in his parched throat. 
He stumbled on, knowing vaguely from the 
shortening shadows that it was nearly noon, 
that the time was flying and that even now it 
might be too late. 

He began to pass small houses, he crossed 
the bridge that spanned Piscataqua’s tide- 
river, he came into the town itself. He 
threaded his way up and down several narrow, 
crooked streets until he came out at last upon 
a broader one, with a feeling that he had seen 
it before. Yes, there ahead of him was the 


The Island of Appledore 211 

recruiting station, he could not mistake it. 
His head was swimming with heat and weari- 
ness, he could hardly lift his feet; people 
stopped and looked strangely at him, but 
he pressed on. The flag was still flying, a 
bluejacket was standing on the step, the door 
was open, he was in time. 

The sailor held out a hand to help him as 
he stumbled over the threshold, but Billy 
shook it off. What he was about to do he was 
going to do alone. Inside a uniformed officer 
was sitting behind a desk; he, too, looked up 
anxiously as he caught a glimpse of the boy’s 
exhausted face, and half rose to aid him. 
Mutely Billy shook his head; he did not want 
assistance. He held to the back of a chair 
and stood up very stiff and straight before the 
desk. 

His throat was queer and sticky and his 
lips so dry that at first he could not speak. 
When at last the words came, they sounded 
strange in his own ears, even though he had 
rehearsed them a hundred times as he came 
along the road. 

“I want to enlist in the Navy,” he said. 


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